Michael Ledo Jim Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) is an arrogant unlikeable mediocre literature professor, novelist, and one of the world's worse blackjack players. He is self destructive and much of the movie involves him attempting to get out of his gambling debts, getting the money to help, but then not using it. He has an odd relationship with one of his students (Brie Larson) and looks to borrow money from a shirtless John Goodman, a sight I could have been spared. Goodman revives his famous line from "The Big Lebowski" but not with the same bravado.The film attempts to study the character of Bennett and bores us by trying to make him "complex" when all he really was just a moody underachiever dissatisfied with life, welcome to the club. About an hour into the film I was yearning for the awful Kenny Rogers version, willing to settle for his Progressive commercial.I would recommend waiting to see this when it becomes a cheap rental.Guide: F-bomb. No sex. Stripper nudity (Chanon Finley)

jaw1907 Great cast, Great cinematography, Great musical score....don't get why this film never received the respect it deserved. Mark, Brie and Goodman at their best.

ghcheese Wahlberg! I expected a lot more. Normally when I see he is in a movie it turns out pretty good. But not this time. When you don't like the main character it is hard to enjoy the movie. If you ate at a restaurant and the food was bad, would you go back again? No. Michael Williams and John Goodman did an excellent job portraying big time bad guys. But it was not enough because Markie Mark was unlikable. I also found the story predictable. My advice. Don't watch this.

Floated2 Mark Wahlberg stars as Jim Bennett, a university professor and novelist with an addiction to gambling. Wahlberg is uncharismatic and unconvincing in a tiresome role in which he has to harangue his students on the subject of true genius. He isn't much of the problem, though since he is the central character, his character was awful in many sense and made it worse to root for him to win. On his personal time, he loses a fortune at blackjack, and finally stakes everything on a plan to persuade one of his students to throw a high-stakes college basketball game. The film contained more crude language than needed, and in a film as this it was taken too serious for certain enjoyment. It was more dark in a sense than expected. Had they made the film more light hearted, perhaps it would have been better. Altogether the Gambler did poorly at the box office (mainly due to a bad release date- Christmas 2014), and since then, it appears this film has become quite forgotten.