What To Watch: Matthew McConaughey Goes All In With ‘Two For The Money’
Two For The Money is a 2005 drama about a former college football star who aligns himself with one of the most renowned names in the sports-gambling business.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. We love a good rags to riches to rags (and then redemption) story and there are no shortages on tap in Hollywood with a slew of big shots stumbling along the way that make for decent morality tales as well as being highly-entertaining. Think all the way from Citizen Kane to The Wolf of Wall Street. In fact, your knee-jerk reaction when sitting down to watch D.J. Caruso‘s taut betting thriller Two For The Money might be to dismiss it before it gets started, feeling like you’ve been here before, and it’d be a fair reaction. It certainly comes packed with all the bits we’ve come to expect in such a thing: young, handsome fellow down on his luck gets a new opportunity to exploit his talent, runs amok, crashes and burn, learns his lesson. Fade to black. It’s tried and true, and surely run thread bare, yet there’s still a lot to like about this effort, with some excellent direction and three keen performances that light it up.
It starts on the football field, where rising phenom Brandon Lang (Matthew McConaughey) is quarterbacking a big game, his destiny already seemingly written in the heavens as, in the last moments, he snakes his way through defenders and leaps into the endzone for the winning touchdown … only to have an opponent land on his leg and absolutely wreck it. Turn your heads, kids. It be nasty.
Flash forward a few years and the once promising NFL legend is now sitting in a dank cubicle recording pitches for 900 numbers working hard to make a comeback, but what’s this? His picks for sports games are actually on target? Yup, so on target, he gets noticed by Walter Abrams (Al Pacino), head honcho for one of the biggest sports consulting companies in the country and he wants a piece of Lang. He offers him a luxury pad, a shiny new desk, and a top spot in the building if he can put his talents to work in the big leagues, telling him to change his name and his approach to be more, shark like. This is a man with a plan.
It works and soon enough, Lang, who is now professionally known as John Anthony, is making money hand over fist for Abrams and the company, turning clients filthy rich in the process. Think it’ll last? Of course not. After getting mixed up with the high life and a run of bad luck making picks, ‘Anthony’ is on the ropes. Worse, Abrams thinks his boy is having an affair with his wife Toni (Rene Russo) and things sour fast. It’s do or die (literally) for Lang as he learns the sword of success is double-edged.
So, after all that, you’re probably still thinking this feels a lot like the rest in the genre and well, good on you. It is. A hundred percent. You’re never once not going to know where Two For The Money is going so just let that be what it is over in the corner there. What you need to do is embrace the predictable and let the show do its thing as what we have here is a very fun and engaging little triangle of characters that give this underrated film some terrific umph. Pacino especially is chewing things up with great effect, riding the coattails of his own performance in 1997’s The Devil’s Advocate, even taking a swing at his last line about vanity in the film and giving it a twist. Ya simply can’t get enough of this guy whenever he’s on screen.
McConaughey is equally good, slick and strong, playing the Icarus metaphor with blinding energy, earning Lang his cockiness without losing our empathies. Alright, alright, alright. If you know what I mean. I also like Russo a lot, even if she’s underused and sort of propped up by tropes. She does it with some punch and kudos to the filmmakers for not giving Abrams some twenty-year-old supermodel trophy wife as eye candy, instead investing in an authentic female character with a legitimate backstory. You’ll wish there were more of her.
Two For The Money is a well-shot film, too, Caruso giving the film plenty of momentum while carefully boxing in his leads. There’s a few critically good sports moments right on the field that look and feel truly on point though the best parts are within the golden walls of Abrams’ office building, where the best sparing takes place. I didn’t particularly go for the Jeremy Piven role, by no fault of the actor, the character see-through from the start and utterly wasted. Also, the few young women that do appear are sort of shallow dead ends as well, a sexually-mounted moment with a girl (Carly Pope) in the office suggesting something might be happening before that tract is completely abandoned and never mentioned again. Curious.
Either way, give Two For The Money a look if you haven’t already. This is a great actor’s movie with a solid story and energetic leads that won’t let you down. You can bet on it.