Plot
When a poor college student who cracks an online poker game goes bust, he arranges a face-to-face with the man he thinks cheated him, a sly offshore entrepreneur.
Release Year: 2013
Rating: 5.4/10 (2,783 voted)
Director:Brad Furman
Storyline
Princeton grad student Richie, believing he's been swindled, travels to Costa Rica to confront online gambling tycoon Ivan Block. Richie is seduced by Block's promise of immense wealth, until he learns the disturbing truth about his benefactor. When the FBI tries to coerce Richie to help bring down Block, Richie faces his biggest gamble ever: attempting to outmaneuver the two forces closing in on him.
Richie Furst (Justin Timberlake), a Princeton management graduate
student who promotes an online gambling site on campus, earning
commissions to pay off his tuition. When the school clamps down on his
activities and he loses all his savings on a last ditch all-or-none
bet, Furst goes straight to the top, flying to Costa Rica to seek out
Ivan Block (Ben Affleck), the kingpin of online gaming.
Block admires Furst's gambling acumen and hires him to be a trusted
runner for his business affairs, which slowly reveal themselves to be
less than on the level. When FBI agent Agent Zbysko (Anthony Mackie)
enters the scene with his threats, Furst discovers he might have bitten
off more than he could chew.
Justin Timberlake generally does well as Furst, wide-eyed and excited
at first, troubled and harassed at the end. I liked his scenes with his
father played by John Heard. I do not really expect much from Ben
Affleck as an actor, and again here, he does not measure up. He is
hardly believable as a nefarious gambling lord who could feed his
enemies to crocodiles.
The beautiful Gemma Arterton is totally wasted here. She does not get
to do much, and she does not have any chemistry with any of the men she
is supposed to be in liaisons with. Anthony Mackie plays the FBI agent
too over-the-top to be convincing.
The story was too familiar to be exciting. The relationship of Justin
and Ben (and Gemma, for that matter) were too dry to be engaging. The
gambling jargon was too hard to follow to be interesting. The ending is
too obvious to be worth the time spent watching.
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