MovieChat Forums > Even Money (2008) Discussion > Even Money' is a bust.

Even Money' is a bust.


The purpose of "Even Money" is to tell us this: Gambling Is Bad. You people out there who are gambling, you better cut it out. CUT IT OUT, I SAID!!

Now, I like being lectured to in a somber, heavy-handed manner as much as the next guy. That's usually why I go to the movies, in fact, because I want someone to pound a message into my skull for two hours, and to do it artlessly and dully.

But "Even Money" also has Kelsey Grammer wearing a fake nose and chin, hobbling on crutches and playing a hard-boiled detective. Why ruin a perfectly good lecture with something so funny?

Directed by Mark Rydell ("On Golden Pond") from a screenplay by newbie Robert Tannen, "Even Money" blends several melodramatic stories of gambling fever into a giant casserole of Afterschool Special moralizing. Carol Carver (Kim Basinger) is a novelist, wife and mother who spends all her days at the slot machines, gambling away her family's savings. Murph (Grant Sullivan) is a low-level bookie striving to hide his occupation from the woman he loves (Carla Gugino). Clyde Snow (Forest Whitaker) loves to bet on college basketball and has a beloved nephew, Godfrey (Nick Cannon), who's coming up in the ranks as the next big NCAA star. And Victor (Tim Roth) is a high-powered underworld bookie who works for the elusive "Ivan" (and may actually BE Ivan, for all anyone knows).

Grammer, playing Det. Brunner, interacts with some of the lowlifes as he investigates a bookie's murder, but that subplot is a red herring. The real attention is focused on Carol, who meets a magician-turned-con-man named Walter (Danny DeVito) who wants to help her make back the money she's squandered. Her husband, Tom (Ray Liotta), growing suspicious of the fact that Carol goes to the coffeehouse every day to write yet is never any closer to finishing, is just a few steps away from discovering his life savings is gone, so Carol and Walter have to act fast.

Meanwhile, Clyde's sports-betting debts are growing, and the type of people he borrows from aren't known for their leniency or payment plans. They want him to persuade Godfrey to throw a game. The young man loves his uncle, but is this going too far?

Murph's girlfriend finds out what he does for a living. He defends himself. "I give people dreams," he says. "No, Murph," she replies. "You take their dreams away."

That's some thick dialogue there, and "Even Money" is loaded with it. Basinger over-acts egregiously and Roth chews the scenery shamelessly, while Grammer actually underplays his character, who evidently walked in from the set of a film noir circa 1940. Forest Whitaker, who deserves an Emmy for the most recent season of "The Shield," flirts with over-the-top hysterics here but mostly stays just this side of it.

It's all so ham-fisted and clumsy, a movie whose agenda looms heavily over the proceedings. It shares a producer with "Crash," Bob Yari, and matches that film's obnoxious "look how important our message is" attitude. "Crash" had better performances, though. "Even Money" is a bust.

Grade: D+

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Yeah, gotta agree. I don't remember when was the last time I figured the whole plot and every characters fortune in just 20 minutes!
I could tell exactly what was going to happen to each of the characters!

Oh, yeah, now I do remember; when I watched S.W.A.T..

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Yeah, EVEN MONEY is a drag, a big snooze. This link below nails it.

http://shareddarkness.com/2007/05/16/even-money.aspx

And how many times does Forest Whitaker just say "Godfreeeeeeeeeeey!" and make crowd noise? That's like, 12 minutes of the movie, right?

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wow...it didn't look all that great, but i see it was a disaster.

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A pity. I am getting tired of seeing Carla Gugino misused as a second banana in awful movies.

"...And Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu"

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it's really not THAT bad.. surely not great.. and as far as gambling movies, not even top 15 (of maybe 20 that I've seen).

it's not that bad.. I won't recommend to go out and see it, but to warn people away from it, is pushing it a little.

the biggest problem I had with it, was Kelsey Grammer. not because of his nose, or chin, or crutches, but just his role all together. I think the movie would've been better if they just wiped his character out all together.

the scene too, where Liotta confronts Basinger, was pretty poor.

I'm a pretty big gambler, and I got into it.

doesn't deserve any high praise, but it's not a waste of 100 minutes of your life. you could do FAR worse.



"I'm the Kling Klang King of the Rim Ram Room"

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I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, myself.

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[deleted]

thank u annief-4, now i know that somebody else likes this movie besides me

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I started watching this movie fullscreen (on my PC), but about halfway CD1 I narrowed the videoplayer so I could make my time more useful than to just spend it on this movie.
It's OK to watch, but really not more than that. It doesnt bring anything extra and the story/plot is ab-so-lu-te-ly aw-ful.
It couldve been made up by a 10 year old.

Considering the cast I give this:
4/10

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Did Kelsey Grammer have more than 5 minutes in the whole movie?

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I'd like to see you all do a better job, it really wasn't that bad.

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I agree .....all these negative comments are not justified. This movie was quite entertaining.

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entertaining? Snooze fest. It's rare that I have to force myself to finish a movie. I didn't care a single bit about any character at any point in the movie. Kim Basinger affirmed her place at the top of my worst actresses in history list. I seriously wanted to punch her in the face several times.

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I really didn't like this movie much at all. Kim Basinger used to seem like a very good actress, but anymore she seems to belong on Lifetime. DeVito was better than expected, but the Kelsey Grammer role was bizarre. He either needed to be not included at all, or more background into his character. Forest Whitiker did good with what he had, but you knew his story right away and you knew how it was going to end.

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Screw you! i loved the movie. i was very into it. never bored me.

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[deleted]

The only thing I liked was the ending, but not the depressing part of the ending, more of the "oh, we tricked you" part of the ending. :)

I though people would have noticed that Clyde was Godfrey Snow's older brother, seeing as Clyde yelled," That's my little brother."

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If anyone here ever feels like revisiting this retarded affair, take a look at Grammar's earlobes. Yes, they are also fake! I can just imagine Grammar getting all psyched about this role, requesting a fake this and a phoney that so he can get into character...that has maybe five minutes of screen time... The only thing I enjoyed in this fuzzy jumble was that friggin awesome poster of Devito.

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I disagree with you all... (or most of you).

I thought it was well crafted, well acted and clever.

The story doesn't say don't gamble, its much more involved than anything that simple. It more an issue of what are you willing to risk. What are the stakes etc.

Crammer's role was supperb. I'm so sick of seeing good guys and bad guys in films. His character was about the biggest scum bag hero I've seen in a long time... so refreshing. (The racist cop in Crash was pretty scummy, but this guy, directly caused the death of one of the bookies). Give me anti-heros anyday to the idiotic depictions of perfect he men so common in movies.

Crash incidently was not a simple "racism is bad" message -- it questioned every assumption about racism ("why we not scared?" Maybe cause we got guns").





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It had many good "pieces", but when they put them together they didn't fit. What a mess.

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Dunno why so many people are trashing this movie. It was interesting enough to keep me in suspense and anticipation throughout. DeVito and Roth especially were excellent - as for the crippled cop character, I agree that it wouldn't have made any difference if he was cropped out during editing. And we could have been allowed to see Ivan playing a greater role in the proceedings. Otherwise, an OK movie.

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Two other films that are similar to this one are The Air I Breathe and Powder Blue. Both movies are about telling the different sad/interesting stories of linked characters. Oddly enough Forest Whitaker is also in both of these films, playing similar characters.

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So much has been stated and I just want to thank CKrisis for bringing out the parallel to THE AIR I BREATH and the fact that Whitaker's roles in both movies are quite similar. I am about to conclude that he prefers the down trodden humane roles.

Kim was nowhere as near as bad as she was in Cellular but close. As long as her characters don't call for explosive outburst she performs better.

Making A Living Seeing

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