Not Enough for the Money

Rating: 3/10 (15 March 2006)

Sorry, but this movie SUCKED. I don't usually use that word (though I do tend to rate lower than others) but this one earned the term. I'm a huge Al Pacino fan, and I go into all his movies expecting to like them. Rarely am I disappointed.
Two for the Money is an exception. The only saving grace this movie has is that it sucks from the very beginning, so you can cut your losses if you understand that the film won't get any better; it actually gets worse. The dialog is absolutely abysmal. McConaughey spews forth some of the most overworked vernacular I've heard in years. "My man, my man, that's what I'm talking' about", he gushes to his clients while convincing them to part with huge sums of money based on his pseudo-clairvoyant sports gambling picks. The other characters don't do any better.
McConaughey's character (Brandon Lang, aka John Anthony) is some washed up football star with a bum knee who is doing 900 number answering in Vegas, when the cable star Walter Abrams (Pacino - he looks EXACTLY the same as he did in "Insomnia") calls him from New York to come and work for him for an obscene amount of money to make football gambling "picks" for him (didn't I see this movie already? Only the last time I saw it, Keanu Reeves, Charlize Theron, and Connie Nielson were in it, and it was good. ) After a few weeks of stellar performance, Lang/Anthony's performance sags, and in between heart attacks (remember those "Super Fans" (da Bears) skits from SNL?), and cigarettes, Abrams shows a psycho side that bears watching, only it basically disappears without a trace and only once or twice comes back, and not very convincingly. It isn't that Walter can't decide. The screenwriters can't decide, and you wonder if they missed the editing phase of the work.
Except that nothing is consistent. We don't know if Abrams is psychotic or kind, and there is no effort to help us make this decision. And before anyone says, "he is a contrast of characters", let me assure you that the screen writers just don't know how to adapt characters. There's nothing deep about this guy; it's just sloppy work. (Can you imagine what was left on the cutting room floor if this stuff made it to the screen?) Did I mention Rene Russo? Another fine actress whose talent went for naught in this bomb. I still want to know how all these folks got tangled up with D.J. Caruso (director: "The Shield", "Smallville"), and Dan Gilroy (screenwriter: uh, "Freejack"?) is hard to say. Someone must owe someone big time.
Russo, as Abrams's long suffering wife Toni, does the best she can with the dialog, but she's no magician. And I wish I was a fly on the wall when she was being directed during one particular scene in which she throws a temper tantrum during a spat between her and Walter. Must have been something like, "Ok, Rene, now scream . . louder, stomp your feet . . . overact, damn it!! Look like you just got out of acting school!" Well, I guess we'll never really know, but I know I've never seen her in anything as bad as this. (Is it my imagination, or is her chin getting bigger? She's starting to look a lot like Jay Leno.) So, save the money, get something good - "Salton Sea", also directed by Caruso, wasn't half bad - and wait for Pacino to start picking his roles like Brandon Lang picks point spreads.