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Well-paced and reasonably entertaining in its own right, The Gambler still suffers from comparisons to the James Caan classic that inspired it.
SUPER REVIEWER
All Critics (139) | Top Critics (38) | Fresh (61) | Rotten (78) | DVD (1)
Mark Wahlberg is always a physically articulate actor; here he wrings despair and disillusionment from every beaten-down gesture, every curt exchange. Jan 23, 2015 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…
Mark Wahlberg is always a physically articulate actor; here he wrings despair and disillusionment from every beaten-down gesture, every curt exchange.
Wendy Ide
The Gambler ... has become an advert for gambling. You couldn't make it up. Jan 23, 2015 | Rating: 2/5 | Full Review…
The Gambler ... has become an advert for gambling. You couldn't make it up.
Charlotte O'Sullivan
Mark Wahlberg's designer-suited performance is shallow and self-admiring ... and William Monahan (who wrote The Departed) devises a new narrative direction which is contrived and preposterous. Jan 22, 2015 | Rating: 2/5 | Full Review…
Mark Wahlberg's designer-suited performance is shallow and self-admiring ... and William Monahan (who wrote The Departed) devises a new narrative direction which is contrived and preposterous.
Peter Bradshaw
Hate the players, not the game. Jan 22, 2015 | Rating: 2/5 | Full Review…
Hate the players, not the game.
Adam Woodward
The dialogue never leaves the surface and the running across Los Angeles that happens in the last sequence is supposed to thrill you, but it's such a cliché that your embarrassment extends to the crew member who has to follow with the camera. Jan 9, 2015 | Full Review…
The dialogue never leaves the surface and the running across Los Angeles that happens in the last sequence is supposed to thrill you, but it's such a cliché that your embarrassment extends to the crew member who has to follow with the camera.
Wesley Morris
Though Wahlberg is a fine actor, there's no way I can buy him as a college English professor holding forth on Shakespeare and Camus. Jan 7, 2015 | Full Review…
Though Wahlberg is a fine actor, there's no way I can buy him as a college English professor holding forth on Shakespeare and Camus.
J. R. Jones
Thanks to the presence of Goodman, Larson and Lange we're presented with a stacked deck, so how come it feels like we spend two hours holding the bridge rules card? May 17, 2019 | Rating: 2/5 | Full Review…
Thanks to the presence of Goodman, Larson and Lange we're presented with a stacked deck, so how come it feels like we spend two hours holding the bridge rules card?
Stephen O'Nion
The dreamlike imagery, editing, and soundtrack invoke the haze of addiction, but the writing never follows through with the message, leaving us unstirred, with little to take home and think about. Mar 20, 2019 | Rating: 6/10 | Full Review…
The dreamlike imagery, editing, and soundtrack invoke the haze of addiction, but the writing never follows through with the message, leaving us unstirred, with little to take home and think about.
Bernard Boo
The Gambler is a solidly acted and directed piece that somehow can't decide what kind of film it is Feb 22, 2019 | Full Review…
The Gambler is a solidly acted and directed piece that somehow can't decide what kind of film it is
Paula Fleri-Soler
THE GAMBLER doesn't amount too much, except a story of a walking existential crisis looking for his pacifier, which is conveniently located at a blackjack table. Dec 7, 2018 | Rating: C- | Full Review…
THE GAMBLER doesn't amount too much, except a story of a walking existential crisis looking for his pacifier, which is conveniently located at a blackjack table.
James Clay
Wahlberg loses, and The Gambler craps out. Feb 15, 2018 | Rating: 1.5/4 | Full Review…
Wahlberg loses, and The Gambler craps out.
Michael Smith
Wahlberg is a miscast... [Full review in Spanish] Dec 13, 2017 | Rating: 3/10 | Full Review…
Wahlberg is a miscast... [Full review in Spanish]
Hugo Hernández Valdivia
Marky Mark try'na sell a watch to a stereotype made me kinda shame-laugh, and the last act was an improvement on the first two, but The Gambler is not something I would recommend to, realistically, anyone at all.
Super Reviewer
Wahlberg's existential crisis is sharply written and briskly paced, but in a film that's a little too aimless.
"The Gambler" is slick, interesting, but ultimately dull and boring. I had so many mixed feelings leaving the screening for this film. Great performances all around, but a premise that has already been done to death. After losing his grandfather, Jim Bennett is faced with his past as all the people he owes money to, come back to haunt him. He has natural luck for gambling but does not know how to get out when he is high. There is some great tension building in the betting portions of the film and whether he will make it out alive, but with hardly a score and a very slow pace, "The Gambler" is kind of a sleeper that will be forgotten in years to come. Not to say that any of the film is particularly bad, it just doesn't do anything new and the script needs some work. Overall, I had a decent time watching this film, but there is nothing special enough about it to warrant a recommendation. I honestly expected more from the director of "Rise of the Planet of the Apes."
Jim Bennett: You got me feeling lucky; I'm putting everything on black... In a film about high stakes gambling and the crushing weight an addiction (or whatever Mark Wahlberg's character wants to call it), knowing how to balance the tension and frustration of someone constantly risking it all with cinematic skill is very important. Rupert Wyatt's directorial follow-up to Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a drastically different type of film in terms of scale, but this remake of 1974's The Gambler clearly shows that he can balance entertainment with intelligence within the confines of mainstream studio fare. Not that we do not see this from other filmmakers in any given year and it is also not like The Gambler is not without its share of issues, but as much as Wahlberg is the star actor in the film, Rupert Wyatt is really selling himself as the star director. read the whole review at thecodeiszeek.com
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