“I want a real love, a real house, a real thing to do every day,” Mark Wahlberg says, playing the lead in director Rupert Wyatt’s The Gambler.
He’s explaining to his love interest, Amy Phillips (Brie Larson), the reasons why he took the $200,000 his mother gave him to pay his debt to dangerous men and bet it on a roulette wheel. “And if I can’t have it … I’d just rather die.”
Jim Bennett (Wahlberg) is a literature professor who falls for a co-ed who stirs a desire strong enough to challenge his addiction. Wahlberg and John Goodman (a philosophical loan shark named Frank) give magnetic performances. Wyatt delivers an exciting movie, but after the initial rush fades, the story’s messages leave the members of S.Q. Reviews cold.
We meet beside the Education Building to discuss the film. Initially we liked the movie, though Rahsaan Thomas takes exception to how Bennett treats his mother. Special guest Richard Richardson thinks the screenwriter should’ve better conveyed the reason Bennett was angry with his mother.
“The movie is called The Gambler,” John Chiu says. “Not the guy and his mother.”
Chiu is from Hong Kong. We lovingly refer to him as our British talent.
“Fair enough.” Richardson pats his French braids. “So tell me why this dude’s gambling like he’s crazy. His family is rich; he’s smart as hell … what else does he want?”
“He lost his grandfather, his father and, in some ways, his mother,” says Emile DeWeaver. “He has this life filled with loss, and he fills it with more loss in the hopes that one day he’ll achieve that victory that’ll make everything worth it. He wants his real life so bad that he’s killing himself to get it, until he finds someone to live for.”
“That’s another problem with the movie,” Thomas says. “All the stupid stuff he did, he should’ve died. Stuff doesn’t just work out because you meet a hot blonde. It sends the wrong message that vacancy is filled by finding someone.”
Reviewers shake their heads in agreement, and what began as general acclaim transforms into growing censorship of the cultural values expressed through the movie. The conversation turns to how The Gambler uses stereotypes that reinforce a narrative of inequality.
“I have to ask this because I just shook my head when I saw it,” Chiu says. “How do you guys feel about the fact that Bennett owes $200,000 to an Asian gang that basically lets him slide throughout the movie? John Goodman loans him a bunch more money, but the Black guy is this hot head that wants to kill him over 10 grand.”
“Actually, he wanted to kill him for insulting his hat,” DeWeaver says. “That’s even worse. But is the poor portrayal intentional or just a lack of imagination on the screenwriter’s part?”
“Intentional,” Chiu says. “John Goodman could’ve played the petty gangster, who’d kill you over a hat, and the Black guy could’ve been the wise godfather-criminal with great lines, but casting assigned those roles to specific people for specific reasons. Is it coincidence that every intelligent, sophisticated role went to White actors while the minorities played cardboard cut-outs?”
We all enjoyed the movie when we watched it, but after we talked about it, the messages and narratives disturbed us. We give it a two out of five dinner cookies.