**/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B-
starring Al Pacino, Matthew McConaughey, Rene Russo, Armand Assante
screenplay by Dan Gilroy
directed by D.J. Caruso
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Finally, a movie as loud and incoherent as Al Pacino himself. He's the resident corruptor of Two for the Money, and the film gives him massive monologues of dubious insight just so the Duke of Hambone can do his thing. Sadly, he's not the one running the show–that honour belongs to the perpetually-ripped Matthew McConaughey, whose role requires him to look mesmerized as Pacino talks of things that "pucker your asshole to the size of a decimal point." Two for the Money sure has that effect: the experience is assaultive in so many ways that you're likely to be riveted even as you wish it would all go away.
A movie about sports betting needs an innocent with daddy issues, thus the hard-drinking father of McConaughey's Brandon Lang drove him to excel in college football, where the younger Lang was sidelined by a leg injury. But his salvation is at hand when he starts picking winners for a 900-number betting service, attracting the attention of Walter Abrams (Pacino). Abrams runs a grey-market betting service in New York and needs Lang's track record to inflate his bottom line. In the process, of course, he fulfills his role as the Bad Dad, renaming our boy "John Anthony" and molding him to the ends of reeling-in hapless suckers. And Bad Daddy proves to be entirely reckless, to the point of betting the farm on a long shot.
Because Two for the Money hinges itself completely on the Daddy angle, it fails to notice when it toes the line it's supposed to erase. This is a movie made by loud men, for loud men; it's so fascinated by Pacino's excesses that it can't tear itself away from his ludicrous bully-boy blather. Though Rene Russo is on hand as Abrams's feisty wife (i.e., the Female Voice of Reason), the picture's raison d'être is to thrill to his idiotic ramblings and determined indulgence in habits that contribute to heart disease. True, McConaughey is used as a buffer zone between us and identification, but that's an escape hatch: nobody actually wants to be Abrams, they want to be under his fascist spell. He's a straight, macho Andy Warhol, and his phone room number-crunchers are the Factory regulars every red-blooded man dreams of becoming.
Pointlessly distended to over two hours, the film wears out its welcome after the one-hour mark and spins its wheels while Pacino woofs and sputters to a moralistic conclusion that denies any fascination with the jerks allegedly being critiqued. Fortunately, Pacino is hilarious enough to keep you watching his drooling and scenery-chewing. Only he could enliven a perfunctory scene where the gentle Lang refuses to say the word "fuck," and only he could actually enjoy a cheap scene in which Abrams goes stumping at a Gamblers Anonymous meeting. It's all too much, naturally, and after a while you want to crawl out of your skin–but hey, it's a reaction, which is more than I can say for most films of Two for the Money's mediocre aspirations. That Pacino's/Abrams's plans go awry is simply the film's way of saying it won't play ball (so to speak) with the real issues, and of course Lang/McConaughey has to see the truth and shed the John Anthony image, but you come away from the movie thinking you'd want to go drinking with Al Pacino, just to see what would happen if he fell down.
THE DVD
Universal's DVD release of Two for the Money has its shortcomings. The 2.35:1, 16×9-enhanced* image suffers from oversaturation, with skin tones erring on the orange side and blacks that seem too dark and opaque. The Dolby 5.1 audio is pretty good, however, delivering a surround experience that's not terribly complex yet consistently involving. Extras begin with a feature commentary from director DJ Caruso and screenwriter/executive producer Dan Gilroy. Compared to the average yakker, this isn't too bad: they're all business when it comes to defending their artistic choices and providing background details on their "inspired-by" true story. Alas, since much of the info they give is nowhere on screen (and tantalizing enough to make you wish it were), maybe they do their job too well.
Similarly, "The Making of Two for the Money" (11 mins.) finds the director, principal cast, and, yes, "inspiration" Brandon Link offering an exegesis of the movie's themes that far outstrips what registers while watching Two for the Money proper. I'd go so far as to say that the discussions of working with Pacino (and working as actors in general) have more true drama than the camp spectacle of the finished film. Another featurette, "Insider Interview: The Real Brandon" (16 mins.), sees Link in conversation with Gilroy on the subject of the nightmare of sports betting; it's again more intense than the movie while offering the peculiar sight of Gilroy conducting the interview in a pair of ostentatious slippers. Eight deleted scenes, meanwhile, show the effects of studio tampering: Lang's bad behaviour following an attempted comeback, a speech by Russo on plastic surgery, and a scene where Lang's brother has wiped out his college fund would have made for a much darker movie, all. The film's trailer and seven TV spots round things out.
*Also available in fullscreen
123 minutes; R; 2.35:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, French DD 5.1; English SDH, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Universal
