Brie Larson's Underrated 2014 Crime Thriller Was Based On A Legendary Book
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Rupert Wyatt's 2014 film "The Gambler" starred Mark Wahlberg as Jim Bennett, a Los Angeles literature professor (!) who, because he enjoys feeding his own dangerous addiction, gambles to the point of self-ruin. At the beginning of the movie, he is already in debt to various dangerous underground gambling honchos and loan sharks, and if he can't pay it all off in a week, one such honcho, Lee (Alvin Ing), will kill him.
We learn early in "The Gambler" that Jim fosters extremely high standards when it comes to human excellence. He notes that William Shakespeare is a true master, and that most writers will never achieve that level of greatness. By that standard, almost all writers are failures. Unless one reaches as high as possible, then one needn't try. The only student of his he feels has any promise is a young woman named Amy played by Brie Larson. Amy, as it so happens, moonlights as a waitress in the same underground gambling den where Jim has lost all his money.
Jim's pride is at the center of "The Gambler." The most notable scene in the movie comes when a different loan shark named Frank (John Goodman) promises to loan Jim the money he needs to get out of debt with the more dangerous sharks ... but only if he admits, out loud, that "I am not a man." Jim, being full of himself, refuses. He gets the money from his mom (Jessica Lange) instead, and then gambles it all away.
"The Gambler" is a remake of a 1974 film of the same name directed by Karel Reisz and starring James Caan. That film, in turn, might be a loose adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Gambler," first published in 1866.
The Gambler is a very loose take on a novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
When I say "The Gambler" is a very loose adaptation of Dostoyevsky, I mean it is a very, very loose adaptation. The Karel Reisz film, written by James Toback, doesn't cite Dostoyevsky in the credits. Although the original film's main character, Axel, does give a lecture about Dostoyevsky early in the movie, leaving a hint to viewers. Axel ends the film getting slashed across the face by a sex worker with a switchblade. It's a grim, downbeat, and enigmatic ending.
The 2014 remake, as one might expect, has a more upbeat ending. Jim goes through some tense gambling situations just to work his way out of debt and be happily at zero. The ending promises that Jim and Amy will end up romantically involved. Never mind that he is 18 years her senior.
Dostoyevsky's 1866 novel doesn't closely resemble either of these films, really, but one might be able to see some dramatic throughlines. The book is about Alexei Ivanovich, a tutor who works for a wealthy Russian family that lives in a hotel (!). Alexei's boss, called The General, is fighting out of debt, hoping Grandmother will die so he can inherit her money. Alexei is also in love with the General's stepdaughter, Polina, and he goes to the local gambling halls with her money to make bets for her. By the end of the story, everyone will have caught the gambling bug.
The wealthy relative mentioned above, for instance, appears in the story to tell all her leeching relatives that they're out of the will, and then proceeds to lose a bunch of her money at roulette. Alexei himself has a magical night in a casino and becomes rich in a matter of hours.
Here's how Dostoyevsky connects to 2014's The Gambler
Fyodor Dostoyevsky goes deep into the various levels of debt of his characters, and there is a lot of desperation. Alexei soon gambles for survival. The story ultimately ends well for him, but only after several people have died, money has changed hands, and he has to stay away from the roulette wheel. In the intro to the intro of "The Gambler," it was noted that Dostoyevsky himself had a gambling problem and that the book reflected his own addiction.
Rupert Wyatt's film does feature a Dostoyevskian protagonist, in that he has highfalutin notions about what makes literary greatness. One might see such intellectual arrogance from characters like Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment." As Bilge Ebiri wrote in his review in Vulture, Wahlberg isn't quite right as a self-righteous intellectual, "but he's very much at home playing a d***head who's gotten in too deep."
The strongest throughline of all three versions of "The Gambler," though, is the titular activity's irrepressible allure. In Wyatt's version, the protagonist covers his addictions with arrogance. In Reisz's version, he seems to mask his addiction with self-pity and a sense of self-destruction. In Dostoyevsky's version, gambling is a rot that ruins rich and poor, young and old. And in all three, debt is the central crux of the story, and that debt — or the absolution from it — can be intergenerational. Gambling and debt are two parts of the same phenomenon.
Wyatt's "The Gambler" wasn't well-received at the box office, making only $30 million on a $31 million budget, and critics didn't love it, but it has an exciting sense of arrogance. And John Goodman is always great.