***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Minnie Driver, John Hurt, Maury Chaykin, Ian Tracey, and Chris Collins
Directed by Richard Kwietniowski & written for the screen by Maurice Chauvet, from the book by Gary Stephen Ross
2003 R
Dozen-or-So Best Films of 2003
It takes a certain amount of self-knowledge and courage to appreciate a story like “Owning Mahowny.” There’s always the temptation, when we hear tales of self-destruction, to say how much smarter we think we would behave, to declare “this person is just an idiot, what can I, a smart person, possibly get from watching him?” But we have all been guilty of actions that, when seen from the outside, are so obviously destructive and self-defeating. We’ve all made messes that would be so easy to clean up if we just chose to stop being a part of them. But things never seem that way from the inside. You show me someone who has never done a self-damaging thing in his life, and I’ll show you a fat-headed, insecure liar who probably only uses the phrase “I was wrong” about once a year.
“Owning Mahowny” is an addiction movie, and we’ve seen plenty of those. There will always be movies about addiction, war, vampires, and infidelity, because these are situations that test the limit of the human mind and spirit. To feed his addiction, bashful, slow-talking Mahowny (Philip Seymour Hoffmann) lies to his girlfriend, to his boss, and to his coworkers. He sneaks out late at night, and he finds himself in odd predicaments, like driving in the snow with his head out the window. Because of his addiction, there are aspects of his life to which he is completely oblivious. He runs into shady characters and we see him whispering, almost hissing, into his telephone, so his secretary won’t hear him. This is the tricky part: his addiction isn’t drugs, it’s gambling. But he’s not addicted to the thrill of victory. He’s addicted to playing with the stakes as high as possible, and when he finally loses all his money, there is a sense of fatigued, joint-aching relief. It’s all over. That is, until he comes across a new pile of loot.
Living in Toronto, Mahowny’s nearest den of sin is Atlantic City. As far as his girlfriend (Minnie Driver) knows, he’s working weekends, he’s going for a long walk, he’s not feeling well. Whatever will let him go, whatever will appease her right away, even if it’s only to play in the wee hours of the night. Waiting for him at his favorite casino is its somewhat disreputable owner (John Hurt), who knows Mahowny for what he is almost right away. Perpetually bent over a table, Mahowny is a machine, getting huge wins only so he can squander them right away. Watched through security cameras, he is called the Iceman for his complete lack of passion.
Hurt gives him a great room because Hurt knows he’s a big spender, but he shows no interest in hookers, fancy food, or the Pointer Sisters. Back in the real world, the bank where he works gives him a promotion. But he never bothers to get out of his cheap suit or his car, which by the end of the movie is a pretty amazing piece of lime green crap. The place of his eventual arrest is where the vehicle finally stalls. All this gains Mahowny nothing. We see him sitting in the parking garage with his airline ticket to Atlantic City. Days of non-stop gambling and heart-pumping stress later, he’s back in the same car, in the same spot, with nothing to show for it but a single chip.
Things get really out of hand when Mahowny begins to steal from the bank, first to cover his bookie, and then to get more money to gamble. As the sums he removes get larger and larger, we realize that as long as he has the bank’s money out in the world, he has turned every waking minute of his life into a high-stakes gamble. He could “lose” at any moment—get caught, that is. He’s trailed by law enforcers who don’t know what to make of him, who keep expecting to see drugs (if the cops in this movie seem a little “off” to American audiences, here’s why: they’re Canadian.)
“Owning Mahowny” scores extra points for the way it relates the hypercapitalism of the 1980s to Mahowny’s lifestyle. He’s called a workaholic by his girlfriend, and is his gambling a natural off-shoot of that? Has he succeeded in business without really trying, so there is no risk left, no thrill, and therefore no payoff? Certainly while gambling, Mahowny does not “smell the roses,” i.e. appreciate the luxuries of the casino or even bother to win. Is his approach to business the same, consumption for consumption’s sake, without a tangible goal? In both cases the process is enjoyed for the process, not for the outcome.
The bank involves itself in a gamble just as big as John Hurt’s casino. When the big-wigs suspect a company that has borrowed their money may not be able to pay up, they want it to borrow even more money at a higher rate of interest. We see these people and we know, aren’t they rich enough? They don’t want money so much as to play the game with the highest possible stakes. The borrowing company is not actually at fault. It is only Mahowny’s doctoring of the paperwork, to feed his habit, that tarnishes them. The acceptance of Mahowny’s lie reminds me of “The Tailor of Panama” and the whole Enron catastrophe, in which people want to believe a fib so much that a giant house of cards is built around it, going up-up-up the chain of command. Not only does the company value Mahowny’s lies, but casinos find themselves in a battle over who gets to take his money, with Mahowny as an unwitting pawn.
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