Owning Mahowny (8/10)

November 29th, 2011

Dan Mahowny had a problem. In debt to a local bookie to the tune of $10,300, and with no way of earning enough to pay it legally, he used his position as assistant manager of a bank to forge a few loans in order to clear his debt. While he was at it, he took a bit more, just to tide him over. By the time he was finally caught, he’d embezzled his bank for $10.2 million.

One Friday night, a long time ago, I went to Atlantic City and lost $200. I woke up next morning with a choice: leave and go on with my trip or stay and win it back. By Saturday lunchtime I’d lost a grand. It took me a few days to recover from that, I can tell you. Mahowny (Philip Seymour Hoffman, in what I consider to be his best role) would understand. He maintains that he doesn’t have a gambling problem but instead a financial one, which is classic addiction-speak. A person who bets all the home teams in the National League and the away ones in the American, sight unseen, would most definitely qualify as having a gambling problem.

It was so bad, in fact, that even Mahowny’s bookie (Maury Chaykin) told him so. Mahowny decided, therefore, to gamble where no one would suggest that he should do otherwise, so he began to fly from his native Toronto to Atlantic City each weekend, smuggling cash across the border into the welcoming arms of casino manager Victor Foss (John Hurt), a man determined to get every cent from his hopelessly-addicted punters. Using every trick in the book – the comped room, the proffering of hookers, drugs or front row tickets to hot-item shows – Foss planned and plotted. He needn’t have gone to all the effort. Mahowny was lost in a world of his own, dedicated only to the hopeless cause of winning.

Owning Mahowny is an excellent film, one that charts a man’s inexorable descent plainly and empathetically. Hoffman is superb here, his body language conveying the hopelessness of the situation he’s in. Note how he only makes eye contact with people who are there to help feed his addiction – if the eyes are, indeed, the mirrors of the soul then he wants no reminders of the pathetic shell he’s become. His long-suffering girlfriend (Minnie Driver) knows that he gambles, but has no idea of how deep he’s actually in, and she tries her best to cure him. When addiction’s come this far, though, no kind words are enough.

Although a serious subject, and ‘inspired by’ actual events, Owning Mahowny is not a bleak film. You could argue, perhaps, that it treats its subject a little too lightly (Chaykin’s bookie is a caricature, for example, and casino bosses are, I would suggest, not quite as ruthless as Hurt’s Foss) but that only serves to make the movie more palatable, the genial air acting as a spoonful of sugar to the movie’s rather stern warning about the dangers of gambling addiction. I note from IMDb that director Richard Kwietniowski hasn’t made a movie since this 2003 release, and that’s a surprise. He’s imbued the movie with a hopeless central figure, a few criticisms of moneygrubbers, whether they be banks or casinos, and a not-at-all showy depiction of the early eighties (the only sore-thumb reference is Voss’s attempt to solve a Rubik’s Cube) and has done it all with a sense of style. Overlooked when it was released, Owning Mahowny was one of the best films of 2003 and is dedicated to those who understand the gambler's argot, where 'breaking even' means you lost and 'down a little bit' translates to 'where can a man sell blood around here'.