Gambling has always been a tricky topic to portray on the silver screen. Whilst gambling is a pursuit that spans the lowest lows and the highest highs for the individual player, its true drama often fails to come across in films and TV shows.
More often than not the best that a gambling fan can hope for is a well-shot poker scene in a James Bond film. Every once in a while we are treated to an awesome gambling film like Casino, which was directed by Martin Scorsese in 1995.
Unfortunately gambling films of that quality are rare and we are often left with movie’s that fall way short of the required standard. Movies like Runner Runner, the 2013 Brad Furman flick that stunk out movie houses and has achieved a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 8%.
But why did a movie with such a big budget and star-studded cast suck so bad? Read on to find out.
Wow, what a mind-numbingly boring movie trailer… Don’t worry, the actual film is worse.
The Premise
Online poker is great! It gets the blood pumping, raises your endorphin levels and turns a run of the mill evening into an action packed one of victory or defeat. The only problem is that all of that drama and intrigue is happening in your head, to an outsider you’re just sat at a computer screen playing a game.
Which isn’t a bad summation, because you are effectively playing a video game, albeit for big financial stakes. Can you think of any blockbuster films based on someone playing a video game? No, neither can we.
That’s because it’s boring to watch someone from afar playing a video game, and it’s boring to watch someone playing online poker – even when Affleck is putting it all on the line and going all-in, the scenes just aren’t gripping. And it’s a mystery as to why Brad Furman thought any different when he was directing Runner Runner.
Instead he ploughed on with his film that follows a poor college student who goes bust whilst playing online poker. Even as a snappy one line description, that sounds incredibly boring and so it turns out to be.
Films like Casino and Oceans Eleven were directed by people that knew how to balance the glamour and glitz of gambling with real-life tension and conflict. In both of those films the gambling element plays the supporting role to the real stories that are playing out in front of the viewers.
The directors of those films also recognised that land-based casinos are sexy, enticing and appealing to an audience. Whereas, in Brad Furman’s case, he failed to recognise just how unglamorous online gambling would be to an audience.
The Damn Cliches
If you asked an average 6-year-old to come up with a story for a film it would either be the plot to Runner Runner or something marginally better. The idea for this movie was either conceived by a child or developed using a ‘random Hollywood cliché generator’.
That guy you thought was really awesome, cool and wealthy turned out to be a bit of a douche? Welcome to Runner Runner and every other film made in the entire history of the universe.
You play online poker and have a successful system? Ahh, of course you must be some sort of out of luck college student with a geeky-yet-loveable personality. The beautiful girl doesn’t like you at first? Don’t worry, she’ll soon get to see your bravery and courage as you’re pushed into extreme situations as the plot progresses.
In Runner Runner the director sticks to the familiar trope that Central America is a lawless region full of bandits and crooked officials. Unfortunately Runner Runner is mainly set in Costa Rica, a country that has been dubbed ‘The Switzerland of the Americas’.
A country that has the motto ‘Pure Life’ and is committed to conservation and the halting of global warming. So that’s one cliché that the director has gotten horribly wrong, but he does try and redeem himself with crocodiles…
That’s right, crocodiles make an appearance as the waste disposal animal of choice for the geeky gangsters in Runner Runner. The bad guy is even called Ivan. This film is bursting at the seams with illogical and at times offensive clichés.
(A sneak-peek at Brad Furman’s private research for Runner Runner.)
The Acting
Ben Affleck is a solid actor with a track record of brilliant work in his previous movies, but he does not excel in this film. In Gone Girl, Affleck did a superb job of subtly portraying the human suffering of his character whereas in Runner Runner…
Well you can guess what we’re going to say, he was terrible! Unless of course his character was intended to be a dude recovering from a lobotomy. Justin Timberlake and Gemma Aterton are even worse.
Every piece of dialogue between them sounds spookily rhetorical and it’s as if they’re non-English speakers appearing in their first ever English speaking film. The rest of the acting is straight out of the cliché book as well.
The bad guys have gotten their inspiration from James Bond films from the 60s and the good guys think they’re in a cop drama from a similar era. In summary this is one of the worst gambling films ever made, if not one of the worst films of all time.
Which is a shame too as there were so many alternate possibilities for this film from the offset. If you get the chance to watch it, don’t. You’d be better off staring at a wall for 91 minutes.
Written by John Collins
