Two for the Money

Two for the Money (Director: D.J. Caruso)

Caruso directed the awful Taking Lives. Another vaguely recognizable credit is The Salton Sea. Written by Dan Gilroy, whose last writing credit was 1994's Chasers, and before that, Freejack. Taking a look at these men and their credits, how in the world do they get together and make a major film?

Al Pacino has found his typecast role. In 1992, when he finally won his Oscar for Scent of a Woman, many of his future roles became him playing a father figure or evil mentor to a younger man. It's always a chance for the legendary Pacino to contrast his acting style with someone completely different, as with Chris O'Donnell in Scent, Johnny Depp in Donnie Brasco, Keanu Reeves in The Devil's Advocate, and Colin Ferrell in The Recruit. It also serves as an excuse for Pacino to shout and prance. It's a sometimes entertaining but odd complement to his seventies work.

Here, Pacino plays Walter Abrams, a man who has found a guy who can pick surefire football winners. This guy is Brandon Lang (Matthew McConaughey), a former blue-chip prospect in college who broke his leg and ended his career, leading to his dead-end job as a phone operator. Lang has an uncanny knack for the predictions, and when he is brought in by Abrams for bigger stakes, money, and clientele, he continues that hot streak and becomes the golden boy. Much like Wall Street, though, this kind of success leads to assholism and bad picks. Trying to keep Lang and Walter in line is Abrams's wife Toni (Rene Russo), who unlike most movie babes is able to tolerate all these macho foibles.

The movie seems to want to be about the familial relationship between Brandon, Walter, and Toni but it fails miserably in setting it up. The conclusion is geared toward the strain of this relationship, but it's not on the movie's mind until the third act, a garbage heap of attempted suspense and glass-shattering drama. The film seems to want to make Abrams a villain and then pulls back. There's a whole mess of people who are affected by the ups and downs of Brandon's picks but it does not affect the movie's plot whatsoever. It's just a whole bunch of ideas, it seems merely made in order to bank on that usual Pacino-younger guy success of the past.

Oh yeah, just like that other Pacino movie Any Given Sunday, there's no NFL license (Gambling? In the NFL? Surely you jest. Sincerely, Paul Tagliabue). So the sport as portrayed looks extremely watered down, and beyond that the action on the field is terribly choreographed. It just looks cheap. For awhile, I thought I was going to get to see a solid brainless movie. It's certainly brainless, but not solid.