A former employer of mine had an odd fun day event off premises, renting a sports center and staging various games of chance. This mini-casino did not use money, substituting for is chips which then meant nothing. As I am not a gambler, I figured I might as well amuse myself at the blackjack table by always saying “hit me” even when my cards were already at twenty. This infuriating another player, even though we weren’t playing for money. He told me, in all seriousness, “Aberrant behavior causes distortions in the luck plane”. I can recall it verbatim, because it is one of the weirdest things anybody has ever said to me.
That is the kind of thing James Caan’s English professor likely believes, as he is hopelessly addicted to gambling. It is telling we see him lecturing his class on Dostoyevsky (who just happened to write a novel titled The Gambler), trying to convince the students of the importance of a character insisting 2 + 2 can equal five just through the force of sheer will: “He claims an idea is true because he wants it to be true because he says it is true. The issue isn’t whether he’s right, but whether he has the right to believe he’s right no matter how many proofs there are that says he’s wrong.” I suspect this is the modus operandi for most of those who deny scientific findings that do not correspond with their beliefs.
Caan’s problem is he needs 2 + 2 to equal $44,000, as that is the amount he owes for his outrageous bets. As he explains to his mother (Jacqueline Brooks), they break your arms for owing $10,000, your legs for $20,000 and, at $50,000, you get a whole new face.
As friend and bookmaker Paul Sorvino tries to tell him, the problem isn’t his gambling, but that his bets are so doggedly counter to the odds. Caan is aware of this, saying, “If all my bets were safe, there just wouldn’t be any juice.” This from a guy who is making time with Lauren Hutton, which I think would cure most men of a wide variety of vices.
Not even seeing thugs pressuring their clients will change Caan’s behavior. Sorvino will call one such customer from Caan’s apartment and Caan will ask him afterwards what was the Italian he shouted. Turns out it was nonsense: “Anything that sounds Italian scares the shit out of them.” More intimidating is when Caan is invited by Burt Young to observe his work as he makes a house call, smashing up a couple’s apartment and twisting the husband’s arm until he screams.
Brooks will eventually give her son the money that will likely save his life. At the second of those, manager James Woods initially declines to let her withdraw $25,000 because she does have two forms of identification. Caan grabs him by the lapels, and Woods caves. This had me wondering if New York City banks didn’t have security guards back then.
Caan calls Sorvino to tell him he has the money, only to make three huge wagers spread across three basketball games before taking Hutton to Las Vegas. At a casino bar, he sees the favorable results of two of the games but walks away without bothering to learn the outcome of the third. I think anybody can guess how that turned out.
This is an intense movie, with Caan seemingly hellbent to get himself as far in debt as possible to gangsters. He’s like a personification of one of Steely Dan’s songs about hard-luck losers. A bit with a drunk singing on the Central Park bandshell feels like it would be a good touch if they had made a track about Caan’s character. And like most gamblers, the worst thing that can happen to our protagonist is being on a winning streak. He just has to undo that streak as fast and thoroughly as possible.
The movie is, unfortunately, more relevant than ever today, what with online sports betting making it easier than ever for gambling addicts to get their fix, and on increasingly smaller and more obscure events. Just imagine the desperation of somebody dropping a $35,000 in the middle of the night on a ping pong match in Poland between two guys in an empty gym. We have the repeal of legislation like the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) to thank for nearly all constraints being removed from online gambling. I wonder what the future will bring, and I can only imagine Doordash making home deliveries of heroin.
The performances in The Gambler all solid all around, with Caan being perfectly cast. If one performance does not ring entirely true, there is something a hair off about Sorvino, which surprises me to say, as I really like his character. I was pleased to see Morris Carnovsky as Caan’s grandfather, as I don’t believe I have seen him in anything since the early noir Address Unknown. A speech Caan makes at the man’s birthday party reinforces the theme of the picture: “This man who got what he wanted with nothing more to back him up than wit and balls and will.” But did his grandfather have the amount of will sufficient to warp the luck plane?
Dir: Karel Reisz
Starring James Caan, Paul Sorvino, Lauren Hutton
Watched on Pluto (not the protoplanet, but an ad-supported free streaming service)