Film Review: Runner Runner

SEPTEMBER 25, 2013 | 12:00AM PT

Director Brad Furman Benefits From Timely Casting, but 'Runner Runner' Never Gets Out of the Gate
Andrew Barker (http://variety.com/author/andrewbarker/)
Senior Features Writer @barkerrant (http://twitter.com/@barkerrant) Whatever his shortcomings as a director, Brad Furman clearly has a knack for timely casting. 2011s The Lincoln Lawyer (http://variety.com/t/the-lincoln-lawyer/) was a watchable yet unremarkable courtroom drama elevated above its station by a lead turn from Matthew McConaughey just as his late-career resurgence was taking flight. Debut feature The Take boasted a key supporting part from recent Emmy winner Bobby Cannavale. And now with Runner (http://variety.com/t/runner/) Runner, Furman snags Justin Timberlake (http://variety.com/t/justin-timberlake/) in an intermission between blockbuster album releases, and Ben

Affleck (http://variety.com/t/ben-affleck/) between directing an Oscar-winning film and beginning his term at Wayne Manor. Yet despite his stacked deck of a cast, Runner Runner (http://variety.com/t/runner-runner/) adds up to little more than a charmless, paint-by-numbers thriller unlikely to escape the forces of Gravity in its early October release.
SEE MORE:From the October 01, 2013 issue of Variety (http://variety.com/print-issues/321-8-october-01-2013/)

Starring as a Princeton grad student of indeterminate age, Timberlake plays Richie Furst, a former Wall Street striver whose young career was derailed by the 2008 meltdown. Attempting to pay tuition by hustling fellow students for an online poker company, Richies extracurriculars are quickly quashed by Princetons crusty old dean, which leaves the young man forced to wager his lifes savings on a round of digital Texas Hold Em to stay in school.

I cant let short-term variance slow me down, Richie pledges in a representative example of the films stilted voiceover dialogue, yet despite his gamblers-son credentials and immense mathematical intelligence (as were frequently told yet never shown), hes taken for all hes worth through circumstances that a buddy statistician tells him are about as probable as winning the lottery (http://variety.com/t/the-lottery/) four times in a row.

Bearing evidence of this cheating, Richie heads off to Costa Rica to confront the poker companys jet-setting CEO Ivan Block (Affleck), whos been running his empire from abroad. As absurd coincidence would have it, Richie happens to arrive in San Jose on the same weekend as a bacchanalian annual gamblers convention, and he takes his case to the highest level. Impressed with Richies moxie, Block offers him a job.

Like The Lincoln Lawyer, Runner Runner displays a wealth of showoffy camera techniques that are never quite narratively necessary, but Furman does well to stage Richies giddy ascent into the upper echelons of the third-world nouveau riche, replete with stacks of cash, flashy cars, top-shelf liquor (though Richie prefers Bud Light, with whom Timberlake

coincidentally has a sponsorship deal) and fancy dames, none fancier than Blocks main squeeze, Rebecca (Gemma Arterton (http://variety.com/t/gemma-arterton/)).

Piece by piece, however, Richie begins to suspect his boss may not be an entirely legitimate businessman. His first clue comes when Block approvingly cites Meyer Lansky as an ethical exemplar. His second comes when he watches a cackling Block feed chicken carcasses to the pet crocodiles in his backyard. And all doubts would seem to have been erased when an FBI agent (Anthony Mackie) accosts Richie to enlist his help in Blocks imminent criminal takedown. But the film still has nearly an hour left, so Richie dutifully heads back into his mentors questionable embrace.

The proscribed character arc here seems to be the slow process by which greed and accumulated compromises allow innocents to work their way deeper into the heart of corruption, but for all his supposed genius, Richie ultimately registers as a rather dim bulb, continually flailing at the obvious lifelines the script keeps throwing him. At long last he decides to strike back (http://variety.com/t/strike-back/), yet his climactic master plan teased for the last half-hour through mysterious meetings and payoffs is forehead-slappingly elementary.

Its the gambling business in Costa Rica occasionally you get punched in the face, Block quips with shrugged shoulders after Richie has been savagely beaten on his account, in one of several moments where Affleck threatens to make this whole film worthwhile. In spite of the mostly undeserved flack he gets for his acting chops, its hard to think of a better thesp than Affleck to play a deliciously despicable douchebag, and his performance (http://variety.com/t/performance/) here ranks alongside Boiler Room and Mallrats in that regard. At times one detects a certain eye-rolling impatience with the material as he races distractedly through a few of his master-of-the-universe monologues, yet thats precisely what the character requires, and Runner Runners appeal increases dramatically whenever Affleck enters the frame.

As for Timberlake, hes an entirely competent actor, yet his cinematic charisma seems best exploited by supporting parts at this point in his

career, and hes never totally believable as a babe-in-the-woods whizkid. It doesnt help that he and Arterton have all the onscreen heat of a bowl of soggy cornflakes, and seem to be thrust together for no reason other than the fact that theyre the two most attractive people in any particular room.

Puerto Rico ably stands in for Costa Rica throughout (considering every Costa Rican depicted here is either a prostitute or an authority figure accepting a bribe, it seems unlikely the country would have signed on), though cinematographer Mauro Fiore (http://variety.com/t/mauro-fiore/) never quite renders the natural beauty of the surroundings as luminously as one would expect.

Film Review: 'Runner Runner'

Reviewed at Pacific's the Grove Stadium 14, Los Angeles, Sept. 23, 2013. MPAA rating: R. Running time: 91 MIN.

Production
A 20th Century Fox release of a Regency Entertainment presentation of a New Regency, Appian Way, Double Feature Films production. Produced by Arnon Milchan, Jennifer Davisson Killoran, Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael Shamberg, Stacey Sher, Brian Koppelman, David Levien. Executive producers, Erik Holmberg, Brad Weston.

Crew
Directed by Brad Furman. Screenplay, Brian Koppelman, David Levien. Camera (color, Deluxe), Mauro Fiore; editor, Jeff McEvoy; music, Christophe Beck; costume designer, Sophie de Rakoff; art director, Sarah Contant; set decorator, Monica Monserrate Llenza; sound (Datasat), Steve Morantz; supervising sound editor, Steven Ticknor; re-recording mixers, Deb Adair, Ticknor; visual effects, Method Studios, Freestyle VFX, VFX Cloud, visual effects supervisors, Dan Seddon, Jim Rider, Jonathan Shore, Erika Sivertson; assistant director, Joe Camp III, David M. Bernstein; casting, Ronna Kress.

With
Justin Timberlake, Ben Affleck, Gemma Arterton, Anthony Mackey, Michael Esper, John Heard, Ben Schwartz, Yul Vazquez, Bob Gunton, Oliver Cooper, Christian George.

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