“If you want to know the truth about someone, find a dream
and work backwards,” says the opening line of voice-over narration from Even Money, a
sprawling drama that tries to take a panoramic, bird’s-eye view of
gambling and addiction. If true in movies as in life, the roots of this ensemble film (whose cast includes Kim Basinger and Danny DeVito, above, as well as Forest Whitaker, Ray Liotta, Tim Roth, Jay Mohr and Nick Cannon) most
likely lie in a gassy fever dream induced by a bad Mexican meal.
Directed by Mark Rydell (On Golden Pond), the movie tries to
inject just a pinch of The Usual Suspects-type mystery into the proceedings, through
the frequent invocation of an offscreen mob kingpin named Ivan. As scripted by Robert
Tannen, though, Even Money is formless — there’s no hold to its overcooked drama,
and certainly no building momentum. Characters are either functionary, vague, shriekingly
contrived or some combination thereof. Coming on the heels of Lucky You just two weeks ago, this movie represents yet another losing Hollywood hand.