Review: Runner Runner

In order to pay for his tuition at Princeton, Justin Timberlake earns money by recruiting fellow students to sign up for an online poker site. The university dean (Bob Gunton) doesn’t appreciate the initiative and, concerned with the college’s reputation, shuts his operation down. Needing quick cash, he puts all of his savings into playing online poker and loses. However, Timberlake feels he was cheated, and suspects a scam going on. Angry, he travels to Costa Rica (which I guess you can fly to for free?) and presents the site’s rich playboy mogul (Ben Affleck) with the news that someone is rigging his system and screwing players over. Affleck apologises and offers Timberlake a high-paying gig working for him. He also meets Gemma Arterton, who is kinda sorta Affleck’s girlfriend, but quickly becomes involved with Timberlake. Unfortunately, it’s not long before Timberlake realises that Affleck is not entirely on the level, and it may be too late for him to break free. Louis Lombardi plays one of Affleck’s underlings, Anthony Mackie turns up as an FBI agent who tries to recruit Timberlake, and John Heard is Timberlake’s loser gambler father whose troubles bleed into his son’s already dicey predicament.

 

There’s nothing much wrong with this 2013 film except that it’s completely useless. Directed by Brad Furman (whose previous “The Lincoln Lawyer” was rock-solid entertainment) and scripted by Brian Koppelman & David Levien (“Rounders”) the film’s inclusion of gambling into the story suggests it should’ve been made around 1998 when Ben Affleck’s best bud (still?) Matt Damon made the underrated “Rounders” (The film even has a similarly useless ‘it girl’, instead of Gretchen ‘who?’ Mol in the former, it’s Gemma ‘duck face’ Arterton). Sure the film features online gambling, unlike “Rounders”, which makes it a little less outdated, but truth be told it’s ultimately not interested in poker anyway.

 

No, what this film really is, is something a whole lot older than even that. This is yet another film where two big stars play characters of opposing morality, and a female star plays the woman involved with both of them. Everyone will have seen this idea before, for me “Tequila Sunrise” was the first film that popped into my head, for others it might be countless others (as far back as the 40s with “Out of the Past”, remade in the 80s as “Against All Odds”). Either way, very little about this film is remotely fresh, and most of it is incredibly old hat. There’s even a bit of “Boiler Room” to it, with Ben Affleck yet again scamming away and trying to recruit an army of worker bees to exploit. The gambling stuff is tacked-on fluff, albeit not exactly a McGuffin, just not dealt with in any depth. And that’s a shame, because at least poker is something I’m interested in, passé or not. But it’s also an overblown depiction of poker. As the old guard of poker players has started to give way to the new guard of mostly online players, this exaggerated party boy view of poker is ridiculous. Most young poker players are Average Joes, computer nerds, and math geeks. There have been some online poker scandals, sure, but most of those have actually seen members of the old guard in disgrace (Howard Lederer and Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson, for instance), not the new guys. So even if the film were interested in poker, it doesn’t get the depiction right anyway.

 

The cast are mostly fine, but if ever you wanted to show that script is king, this is your example. There’s nothing the cast could’ve done, when this appears to be the best the screenwriters could come up with. It’s pretty dull and predictable from moment one. Justin Timberlake and (particularly) Ben Affleck are perfectly fine, whilst Anthony Mackie steals a few scenes in the role of Denzel Washington (Watch the film and tell me you’re not thinking the same thing). Bob Gunton may not have much range, but playing a humourless Princeton dean is that range. John Heard looks horrible, but is convincing as JT’s deadbeat father, and at least it’s not “Sharknado”. However, Gemma Arterton can’t act. At all. The fact that no one amongst her family, friends, or colleagues has told her this fact is an act of extreme cruelty. She is absolutely horrendous, and horrendously miscast in the role of a woman that a guy would find attractive, let alone two guys, let alone two guys played by Ben Affleck and Justin Timberlake. Seriously, tell me she doesn’t look like a duck.

 

You’d think JT and Ben Affleck would be a winning combination. Affleck really impresses as a guy with enough power to not have to get violent too often to get results, reminding me a bit of Burt Lancaster’s granite-like ego in “Sweet Smell of Success”. Both leads are good enough to suggest that they could indeed be a winning combination…if this film weren’t so clichéd and passé. If you’re looking for an entertaining poker movie (and the prospect of watching a film made before 1995 scares you because you’re a freaking idiot), watch “Rounders”. It’s a better film- from the same damn screenwriters!- and Matt Damon is a much better actor than Ben Affleck. By the way, Leonardo DiCaprio produced this film. Why?

 

Rating: C