Runner Runner

Runner Runner refers to a Poker hand drastically improved by the turn or the river cards. Runner Runner could have used a Runner Runner, as the only thing it had going for it was a pair of Aces. I couldn't resist. Justin Timberlake and Ben Affleck lend their faces to a movie that in any other case should be straight to DVD. I imagined Nicholas Cage, Val Kilmer, or Christian Slater in the same roles, and it's not a stretch to think that you could find it at the bottom of a Netflix queue.

We are introduced to Richie Furst (Timberlake), a wunderkind financial rising star who just happened to be on the wrong side of the banking crisis. He goes back to get his Masters in finance at Princeton, but despite being on the cusp of being a millionaire just a few years ago, he is struggling to pay the tuition. Likely story. He turns to online gambling to try and build his dwindling tuition fund, and while playing, his flawless mathematical analysis captivates a party-going audience, and after building a sizable fortune, he loses it all to a shadow poker site that he suspects is cheating. His suspicions are confirmed by his computer nerd friends at Princeton, and he embarks on a mission to get his money back from the man who runs the sight; Ivan Block (Affleck).

The film plays out extremely predictable and induces more than a few eye rolls. No get-rich-quick cliche is spared in this Wall Street/Boiler Room/ PG version of Scarface. Affleck and Timberlake seem to be having fun playing out the billionaire fantasy in an island paradise that just so happens to have a dirty underworld that they just can't resist. There is even a gung-ho, reckless FBI Agent (Anthony Mackie) who tries desperately to corner Block, convinced that he is running a shady business.

As the film reaches its climax at a premature, but welcome 90 minutes, we find as an audience that essentially nothing has happened except for two actors running around a Central American country looking cool and pretending to matter. The problem is that they don't matter. We're given absolutely no development of characters, and don't care about the outcome. Anthony Mackie is wasted as a federal agent running and gunning all alone; it would have been much better if the FBI had partners. That's an opportunity for some give and take, maybe some witty dialogue. Nope, he's alone. Affleck is an enigma as Ivan Block. A hard and soft man who is perhaps too simple to have developed a multi-billion dollar empire. Where did he come from? Why should we care? Timberlake looks the part for Richie. He's just not believable as a man who would leave everything to follow a hunch to Costa Rica. It doesn't make sense. Nor does it make sense that his father is... shocker alert... a gambling addict in too deep.

Everything about the writing is disappointing. I'm embarrassed that I listened to the hype in early 2013 and listed this as one of the possible Oscar contenders of the season. Absolutely not. The story was written by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, who worked together to write Rounders, Knockaround Guys, Oceans Thirteen, and a few others. Gambling is their wheelhouse, but they just can't really hit the mark with this one. Online gambling is an area of the genre that hasn't been explored too in depth, and they could have milked it for all it's worth. Instead, they polished a turd.

Brad Furman directed, with his big break coming with 2011's The Lincoln Lawyer (not even that good). He's got a few straight to DVD's under his belt, so I can't really knock him for doing what he does.

All in all, the film isn't even worth any more of my time, and it certainly isn't worth yours. How bad was it? I should have gone to Machete Kills. that bad. 5/10.