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Owning Mahowny Director: Richard Kwietniowski Rated: MA 15+ Palace Nova Eastend Cinemas, Now Screening 
Based on the true-life book 'Stung' by Gary Stephen Ross, this is the the story of Toronto banker Mahowny, who stole more than $10 million from his bank over a two year period in the early 1980s. The funds were used to feed his compulsive gambling.Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the flakey, stressed-out Mahowny who has access to large amounts of money. He goes to the race-track, to Atlantic City and bets stupidly on basketball games. A holiday in Las Vegas with his long-suffering girlfriend Belinda (Minnie Driver), ends in disaster when he can't tear himself away from the gambling tables. The objects of both these characters' attraction is hard to understand, but Seymour Hoffman is perfect as a fat sweaty type, a role which he makes look easy. The Casino boss, Foss, played by John Hurt, is more than welcoming to the hopeless gambler. Apparently Canadian and US government regulations were tightened following the revelations of the predatory behaviour of casino management that this case revealed. The film claims to be a character study and an examination of addiction, but doesn't it even glamorise gambling perhaps? The viewer feels that, in the end, everything will be lost; it's just a matter of how long it takes. This film then is more an episodic tele-movie type of production which extracts too little humour and entertainment from its potentially interesting subject matter.  |
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