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Owning Mahowny
EMAILPRINTSony Pictures Classics
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 29 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 8 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Maurice Chauvet
Gary Stephen Ross (book Stung: The Incredible Obsession of Brian Molony)
Directed by: Richard Kwietniowski
Release Date:
Theatrical: May 2, 2003
DVD: October 14, 2003
Running Time: 104 minutes, Color
Origin: USA / Canada
Summary
RATING: R for language and some sexuality
Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Minnie Driver, Maury Chaykin, John Hurt, Sonja Smits, Ian Tracey, Roger Dunn, and Jason Blicker
Polite, mild-mannered Dan Mahowny (Hoffman) is an assistant bank manager with a head for numbers, a knack for making decisions, and a devastating appetite for gambling. Dan Mahowny is the unlikely hero who takes on two of the financial institutions everyone loves to hate, the bank and the casino, and, for a brief while, he wins. (Sony Pictures Classics)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Love and Death on Long Island
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
There have been many good movies about gambling, but never one that so single-mindedly shows the gambler at his task.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
In the acting department, there's nobody on the current scene with more sheer talent --- or offbeat charisma -- than Philip Seymour Hoffman, in whose bearish body nestles the heart of a lithe and limber artist.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Hoffman plays Dan Mahowny's addiction to instant money as something dirty and private and, at the same time, soul-quickening.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) John Bentley Mays
Unusual, as such movies go, in its disregard for busy theatricality.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly John Powers
Atlantic City casino boss played with pointedly corrupt amusement by John Hurt, doesn't merely oversee hell but gets a real kick out of the damned.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
As channeled by the extraordinary Hoffman, Dan Mahowny is less a freak than a nerve-deadened Everyman with the courage to search for something that makes him feel alive.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Kwietniowski has managed to create a surprisingly engrossing and suspenseful narrative without resorting to cosmetics, melodrama or hype.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Kwietniowski follows up his impressive debut feature, "Love and Death on Long Island," with this equally absorbing study of a compulsive personality.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
The situation is not too far removed from that of Jayson Blair and The New York Times. The corporate oversight in place to catch deceptions is lulled into becoming part of the deception. Mahowny wanders through this film as if waiting to get caught, forced into deeper gambling debt because no one applies any brakes.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
A fascinating fact-based portrait of a gambling addict.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
This may be the quietest addict ever to hit movie screens, as well the most disturbing.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder
Kwietniowski turns up the tension so incrementally, we don't realize the scope of Mahowny's moral wreck until it is too late.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
An unflashy but fascinating meditation on addiction and greed. The junkie was clearly Mahowny, but the greed, in a way, was everybody else's: the bankers', their flush clientele's, and the casinos', all busy feeding his habit.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan
Owning Mahowny may at times feel futile in its colorless, disheartening subject matter, but that's the point -- to see how barren Mahowny's life becomes. Hoffman gives the film relevance.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
At its best, Mahowny is intricate, engrossing, wryly funny, and strangely poetic.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
Kwietniowski might have tried for some edginess that would express a measure of the excitement Mahowny is experiencing. Despite the driven intensity of the banker, the film threatens to slip into the lifelessness of the drab world it depicts.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Owning Mahowny shares the earlier ("Love and Death on Long Island") film's crisp precision, but it's a far more rigorously sublimated and abstract account of l'amour fou.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine Peter Rainer
Hoffman has his specialty, though, and it’s not inappropriate here: He always looks supersmart and yet his reactions to what goes on around him are superslow.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Another actor might not have been able to carry the film, given such a creepily monomaniacal character, but Hoffman lets the humanity soak through, registering split seconds of panic when he's on the verge of getting caught, then just as quickly creating and working a new plan.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Hurt, who starred in Kwietniowski's earlier study in compulsion, "Life and Death on Long Island," is oily perfection as the devious Victor.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Hoffman is a fine actor in a rut, working on a string of socially alienated characters who are variations on the same theme. That's too bad, because the story being told around his static presence is amazing.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
There are some effectively suspenseful moments in the movie, particularly during the gambling sequences, but one longs for more context and probing into the psyche of an ordinary man with an extraordinary compulsion.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Just doesn't give us enough to hold onto, perhaps partly because it's executed with so much restraint and subtlety. It's often a tense, uncomfortable little movie.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson
There could have been life in the material, but no one involved save Hurt and Collins seems to have taken the time to find it.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
Whatever minor entertainment there is to be gleaned from Mahowny -- set in the early 1980's, mostly in Toronto -- comes in bits and pieces.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
After its irresistible first act, Owning Mahowny loses its energy and focus very fast.
Read Full Review >Variety David Rooney
Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Hurt give compelling performances... But the coldly unrewarding drama is as distant and joyless as its protagonist, representing a disappointment for director Richard Kwietniowski.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Hoffman confessed he was drawn to the role because ''this was a guy who didn't know how to feel, and I found that fascinating.'' His challenge is our frustration
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Ironically, it's most engaging when the focus shifts to Hurt's matter-of-factly amoral enabler, whose glistening suits and jewel-colored shirt-and-tie combinations suggest a particularly poisonous tropical reptile.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 8 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Joan C. gave it a9:
I thought this was a thought provoking insight into the world of a gambling addict. Excellent acting by Hoffmann. Is Mahowny good or bad? Does he have an illness(addiction) or is he just greedy? Does he have a conscience? You tell me. A truly great movie. I was 'hooked' from beginning to end, but then again, I DO have an addictive personality.
Sturm A. gave it a 10:
This is one of the best movies about gambling.I like gambling a lot and this movie gave me something to think about.
Buttered Popcorn gave it an 8:
[***SPOILER***] What fascinated me about this movie was the tantalizing way it played with where we might expect it to go as a movie, and where it leads us instead... In fact, the most mundane part of the story is if he wins or loses- we all know he will lose, most assuredly. That is a given, and the filmmaker treats it so matter of factly, the movie takes on a detached air of fatalism. The real story being told here developes true to the title: who owns Mahowny? Does the gambler have some abilty to keep regenerating what has become the greatest charge in his life - the thrill of placing the bet (not of winning or losing, per se). In fact, we are told at one point that winning only counts in so far as it allows him to place more bets. Or does the bank he works for own him? In some sense yes, as we see behind the scenes that they happily look the other way at his accounts as long as his clients run up bigger debt limits and reap them bigger profits. Or does the casino own Mahowny, who willfully avoid knowing too much as a means of limiting their culpability. Or do the Feds own Mahowny, who won't draw the curtain on him untill the stake becomes big enough to justify the expenses created in tracking all the unsuccessful leads. The real story here is this: the only certainty is that the game of chance doesn't stand a chance, and the invisible powers behind the scenes are really all we have to see. That's just the right amount of ironic twist and paradox to make this a faxcinating movie, for me at least.
Richard B. gave it a 9:
I found the movie disturbing... discomforting. My gut tightened and twisted as I watched this average appearing man discard himself, his values, his potential and steal compulsively to gamble obsessively, without any hope. I could feel the pull of my own addiction. I was gripped watching him lose himself in a dimensionless world of gambling that offered nothing but a high. I really liked this movie because it gave me a story and movie free of the pretty stars and commercial imagery. I got a genuine glimpse of a facinating story using real characters. In reading some of the commercial reviews I always find myself disappointed that some reviewers are served a good beer and tasty pasta, but instead they want a coke, ribs hold the sauce. So, you give them the ribs, and guess what?
Chad S. gave it a 9:
Any person who has ever watched a large wager evaporate in the waning seconds of a sporting event will relate to the scene when a Tar Heel clanks two seemingly meaningless free-throws. "Owning Mahowny" captures the adrenaline high, the sinking feeling, the whole kit-and-kaboodle of gambling. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is predictably awesome, and John Hurt is compelling as a sleezeball, albeit, a compassionate one. "Owning Mahowny" is a quiet picture, because its star chooses self-implosion as the road to self-destruction. Hoffman, the one with the initials P.S., is the real acting genius. He doesn't have to hit his girlfriend, or the mirror in a bathroom, to vent, after losing his money and self-respect. Mahowny thanks the casino manager, his handler, and leaves with a bag of ribs. His brave face is all-the-more effective than an angry one. It's a wonderful performance in a wonderful movie.
Brett V gave it an 8:
Great story....cast was wonderfully picked....Philip Seymour Hoffman was outstanding!
