Owning Mahowny (2003)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Wow! Such a good movie.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

"Owning Mahowny" is a hard film for me to love...much like "Catch Me If You Can" or "The Polka King". This is because all three are true stories about sociopaths who spent much of their lives hurting, stealing and lying to people...and making a movie about them just gives these awful people more notoriety. I certainly would hope they wouldn't benefit financially from the films and I hate to imagine the films making them heroes in the eyes of the viewers....but I fear both are indeed the case for these god-awful people.This story is about a man who committed the largest single person bank fraud in Canadian history...$10,000,000. The film begins with Mahowny* (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) deeply in dept for gambling...and he soon makes it worse by trying to gamble his way out of the problem. To do this, he is playing fast and loose with the bank's customers as well as creating dummy corporations to help hide this! A part of the story is about the culpability of the casinos in the embezzlement. The film contends that in many ways the casinos (embodied in the form of a sleazy guy played by John Hurt) should have known that a man making a very modest salary could NOT legally be gambling millions. And, they profited by his repeated trips to Vegas and Atlantic City...so there wasn't a lot of incentive to get him to stop or to alert authorities.The film features some nice acting and is an understated sort of film...with little glitz despite the locations involved. There also are no big surprises...as the IMDB page talks all about the embezzlement and the film never leads up to it...he's already spending money he doesn't have when the story begins. So there's little in the way of suspense...and the ending was incredibly anti-climactic. Despite this, it's interesting and worth seeing...though far from a must-see.By the way, the DVD does NOT have closed captions for the hearing impaired.

This the probably the fourth time I'm watching this movie.The movie is about gambling addiction and like "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead", Hoffman plays a "straight" guy that has an addiction that he hides from the world. And yes, after his death, his roles in both movies have more meaning.This is a great movie. Yet another example of skillfully making a small and low-key movie without being boring.One of the most difficult things about this movie is that it has extensive scenes of a man sitting in front of a gambling table. It could have been boring in the hands of any other filmmaker, but this is done skillfully here. The combination of great score, acting, editing and cinematography makes it a delight and the movie doesn't bore you even for one minute. This is a great accomplishment and everyone in the crew and cast (Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Hurt) should be credited for that.Philip Seymour Hoffman is excellent, but you already know that. I said it once and I'll say it again: This actor can take any simple role/character and make it the most interesting in the world. What a talent. What a loss.John Hurt is also great.7/10 Excellent

This is a well done true story movie about gambling addiction the fraud on the Canadian bank is secondary. It's not theatrical in the depiction of the gambling and it's quite real life. Phillip Seymour Hoffman gives an understated performance. Sometimes the mumbling can't be understood but the addiction is convincing. It's so understated that it's more believable and painful to watch him give everything back to the house. Minnie Driver with her strange wig is quite a sympathetic girlfriend. The Faustian casino manager played well by John Hurt. Overall worth a watch.

This tells the sad story of a perfectly nice man's slide into addiction. This isn't about alcohol or drugs, but an addiction to gambling. An addiction so overwhelming that it nearly destroys his life, and the lives of others. Smoothly directed and carefully filmed, each frame that rests on Mr. Hoffman's face clearly reveals this consummate actor's inner struggle. As he sinks ever deeper into his addiction and the criminal activity necessary to keep going, we suffer along with him, knowing that in the end there's only hopelessness — but he still can't stop, and neither can we. Ms Driver as his faithful and long-suffering partner is just as real in her devotion combined with her helplessness in the face of this rival, a rival she cannot hope to best. The supporting cast is excellent, all real and all real people. This is not a feel-good story. It's depressing but at the same time fascinating as we watch Mr. Hoffman's descent into his own personal hell, a hell he cannot allow anyone else to enter with him.