Two for the Money

(L to R) Brandon Lang (MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY) gets the new name of
“John Anthony” from Walter Abrams (AL PACINO)
Photo Credit: Credit: Eike Schroter

 
“To pop, sports were a religion where all wrongs could be made right,” says Brandon Lang (Matthew McConaughey). Brandon’s interest and talent for football had the potential to take him a long way, but a mishap in a crucial play leaves his knee injured and his hopes of a pro career destroyed.

Six years pass, and Brandon picks up work as a 900-line operator. His knowledge of sports and his talent for hotline tips earn him a crack at the sports betting desk. After various rejection letters from teams he’s pursued in an attempt to salvage his dreams of playing football, he gets a phone call from Walter Abrams (Al Pacino), a big-league bookie. Abrams has left a job offer in Brandon’s top drawer.

Having little left to lose, Brandon heads to New York to work for Abrams. Walter tells him, “Stats is not enough. You need a voice. You’re selling certainty in an uncertain world.”

Abrams has heart problems, which can’t be very good for someone whose lifestyle is inextricably dependent on the highs and lows of the betting world. He takes Lang out to the usual first dinner–flamboyantly spendy and focused entirely on selling Lang on the lifestyle. There he’s also introduced to Toni (Rene Russo), Walter’s wife. The relationship between Walter and Toni plays off the respective actors’ talents for snarky characters.

Lang is one of those typical sales recruits, enticed out of a job he didn’t like by the possibility of riches. Walter “cultivates” Brandon into a salesperson largely by intimidation and deprecation.

“Your pitch sucks, but you got potential,” says Walter.

What he needs, apparently, is a new name and a new persona. So, Walter shapes him into John Anthony, a poor man’s Patrick Bateman. Jerry (Jeremy Piven), up until now the star of Walter’s outfit, feels threatened by Brandon’s sudden emergence to the top of Walter’s food chain. Brandon rhymes with “branding,” which is precisely what Walter is attempting to do with Lang as a personality amongst his cadre of glorified bookies.

They’re not beneath going into a support group for gambling addicts simply to pick up a few suckers. Walter fabricates a little speech about the problem not being gambling, but having a losing attitude… or, rather, an addiction to losing. It’s odd, because in a sense Walter is right. In a better drama, this scene could have been the beginning of a fascinating exploration into the psychology of addiction, but we can’t and shouldn’t expect that in this movie. Instead, as a means of comic relief following a potentially depressing revelation, Walter hands one of the group members his card as he and Brandon are being asked to leave.

A lot of people laughed at this point in the film, finding it humorous. I did not, because it’s a truth about the shameless and invasive tactics of salespeople. To some people, the sense of occasion and sanctity of just about anything can be violated for the sake of commissions.

The character of John Anthony is brought to life on a promotional show produced and hosted by Walter. Instead of reading from the script, however, Brandon improvises his own story of grass roots ambition and it sells very well with the viewers because Brandon clearly believes his self-generated hype.

We see some human element to Walter, the 24-hour human sales machine, when it’s revealed he has heart problems and a gambling addiction. Instead of glossing over it, the film does revisit these issues a few times to give the characters much needed depth in an otherwise cheap spinoff of Ben Younger’s “Boiler Room” which was in turn inspired by Stone’s “Wall Street.” I go only as far as “Boiler Room” in my comparison, however, because “Wall Street” is in a league many strata above “Two for the Money.” Also, “Boiler Room” is a direct parallel, although more carefully fleshed out in its examination of gambling addiction.

However, in both films we do get to see what happens not just to the people who are consumed by the selling of promises, but also the people who are ruined by it–the compulsives whose addictions are exploited by the Walters and Jonathans of the world.

If you think of it as “selling certainty”, then there really is nothing being sold by Jonathan, Walter and their associates, other than the guarantee–a false one at that. Gambling has exactly that same allure… the guarantee of a possibility, which itself implies uncertainty–the antithesis of a guarantee.

Jerry, the previous top performer, begins to fall as John Anthony swings into full gear and is moved to the head of Walter’s lineup.

Meanwhile, Toni and Walter begin to have serious problems revolving around Walter’s inability to kick his own gambling habit that has hobbled their personal finances. As Brandon becomes too confident of his own little successes, he takes more shortcuts, eventually failing to research his picks and locking them in too early. Both Walter and Brandon are essentially getting in over their heads by risk-financing their gaps–both monetary and ethical.

The largest risk involves one of the highest-stakes gamblers, Novian (Armand Assante). Novian’s the kind of guy who likes to intimidate people with his money and influence. Nonetheless, Brandon (or shall we say Jonathan) is hungry for the kind of unimaginable wealth Novian represents. Novian as a person isn’t really fleshed out all that well, but he serves here like many other elements outside the three lead characters as a plot device to, obviously, contribute to Brandon’s inevitable downfall. There’s nothing particularly interesting to be learned from it because, as you will see, Brandon tries to right things with another wrong.

The only reason that Brandon is compelled to abandon the game is because he realizes he can’t win at it, not because he understands there’s no logic, reason or science, and consequently no intelligence, in it. That doesn’t make this a bad film as much as it makes the lesson learned from Brandon’s experience a predictable and uninteresting one. POSSIBLE SPOILER: Because Brandon came with nothing to lose, and left with nothing, the net result is that we can’t feel much for him or the addicts who should have the ability to know better.

Like many avenues of salesmanship, gambling is a cycle where the gullible take advantage of the gullible. Both parties, the seller and the buyer, are equally culpable for their participation in this model whose sole avenue of profit is tantamount to resolving the least meaningful equation in the world (one team wins, the other loses… sometimes the other way around).

The film tries to work in a subplot involving Amir (Craig Veroni), a small business owner who gets suckered in by Brandon, wins big, then loses even bigger. You could feel sorry for him, but should you? Unlike the equivalent character in “Boiler Room”, who destroys his family’s entire savings on the promise of an investment sold by a flimsy firm misleading him on a scam, Amir was not misled to believe this was an investment. It’s clear he knew he was gambling.

“Rogue Trader,” a movie about the broker whose outrageously risky scheme single-handedly wiped out Barings Bank, had a great deal more buildup, tension and intrigue to it. While the production value of “Rogue Trader” isn’t quite as hefty as this movie, the plot and character development are considerably more elaborate. When Nick Leeson crashes all of Barings with a multibillion-dollar loss, enough events have been churning the Titanic toward the iceberg that you’re caught in the immense undertow as Leeson’s universe comes crashing down around him.

“Two for the Money” has its moments, but there’s such a steady current of egocentric choices and predictable outcomes, that you feel not one thing of consequence has been ventured, gained, lost… or learned.

Two for the Money • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 • Running Time: 122 minutes • MPAA Rating: R for pervasive language, a scene of sexuality and a violent act. • Distributed by Universal Pictures