Formulaic Runner Runner Plays a Bad Hand
I imagine Runner Runner sounded like a pretty good idea during initial pitch meetings to studio executives. A script set inside the nebulous and unregulated world of international online poker written by Rounders and Ocean’s 13 scribes Brian Koppelman and David Levien. Brad Furman, fresh off of his success with The Lincoln Lawyer, taking up the directorial reigns. Recording superstar and rising talent Justin Timberlake signing on to portray the brash, confident lead. Ben Affleck, an Oscar for directing Argo freshly in his grasp, going back to his smarmy, calculatingly callous Boiler Room roots with his portrayal of the film’s seductively charming villain. It all sounds pretty darn unbeatable.
PHOTO: 20th Century Fox
But what should have been a winning hand, especially considering the story Koppelman and Levien was drawing inspiration from was based on a real tale. In the end, though, success proves to be a virtual impossibility pretty much from the outset, the movie tiredly going through the motions with such benign disinterest it’s like all involved would rather be doing anything else but making this movie. Runner Runner is an empty spectacle, the finished flick a losing proposition that should have been folded before the first bet was even made.
The scenario is promising enough. Princeton graduate student, a former Wall Street golden boy who was financially undone by the 2008 crisis, Richie Furst (Timberlake) has his future put on hold when he’s swindled by an online gambling site, his tuition serendipitously stolen from him. He heads to Costa Rica to meet face-to-face with Ivan Block (Affleck), the man who owns and runs the site, certain that if he shows him the evidence that he’s been cheated like any good professional gambler he’ll make good on the bogus losses and return to him his money.
Block does one better. Knowing talent when he sees it, he hires Furst on the spot, setting him on a path towards wealth and power unlike anything he could have achieved working on Wall Street. But, as is often the case, nothing is as it seems. Driven F.B.I. Agent Shavers (Anthony Mackie) attempts to strong arm the college kid to be his mole inside Block’s organization, hopefully making the case the businessman’s tactics are illegal at best, murderous at worst, his whole world nothing more than a glitzy illusion whose only goal is to ruin innocent lives.
None of this is original, countless pieces of fiction following this same setup since the beginning of the medium. Where things are going, what is going to happen to Richie and his friends, who Ivan is, none of this is a shock, the viewer figuring out the answers to these questions and so many more before the film itself is even half over.
All of which would be fine if the script was intelligently constructed and everyone involved appeared to be engaged in telling this particular story. Problem is, neither of those things end up coming to pass. There is no passion, no energy, no excitement, the movie cut together and delivered to the audience in as rudimentary a fashion as possible. Characters are introduced and summarily discarded, while apparently important players are given zero degrees of depth making their eventual transformations altogether forgettable and even less believable.
This is most apparent in how it relates to Rebecca Shafran, Block’s right-hand woman and the focus of a love triangle that develops between him and Richie Furst. Played by Tamara Drewe and Byzantium star Gemma Arterton, her character is key to the third act, the one most instrumental to how things are eventually going to turn out. Problem is, the movie doesn’t care about her. It never takes the time to make her relationship with Block matter or her growing romantic entanglements with Furst have any weight, her evolution having a perfunctory blasé laziness to it that’s frustratingly unfortunate.
PHOTO: 20th Century Fox
It is this sort of issue that plagues the film as a whole. Nothing happens that isn’t a foregone conclusion. Worse, the presentation is so rudimentary there’s no sense of personal touch on Furman’s part to be found at anywhere. There is a constant sense that everyone involved with the production is just phoning it, an average second-tier Cable Television show having more zip and inspiration than anything happening here does.
I have no idea what happened. At worst, this motion picture should have been nothing less than a manipulative, slickly produced and energetically acted guilty pleasure. At best, it could have been an invigorating procedural thriller worthy of multiple views. But it isn’t either of those things, and while Affleck has a few moments and Timberlake is hardly unlikable, I still can’t say either of them does enough to rise above the maudlin tediousness that sits at the heart of things. Runner Runner isn’t good, sitting down at the table to play any of the hands it ends up dealing a monumental waste of time.
Film Rating: 1½ (out of 4)
