The brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffmann stars as Dan Mahowny in the film "Owning Mahowny", as a bank employee with a serious gambling problem. The film recreates a real incident that occurred in Toronto in the early 1980's when Brian Molony, a bank clerk, embezzled over ten million dollars from his bank over an 18-month period. This character driven film presents the man as a quiet, but dependable employee. What seems less visible is his awkward, but determined drive to gamble. The internal struggle Hoffmann's character goes through when confronted with walking away from the table with a big win in one sequence stands as the core of the film. This is a film about addiction in a less seen arena than drugs or alcohol, but the effects and the enabling seem quite similar. Unfortunately, the film does not fare well beyond Hoffmann's award worthy performance. The story is too flat and at times too uninvolving to be sustained by his performance alone.
Review of Owning Mahowny
