Konterr Brilliant and touching

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

redwhiteandblue1776 I like reading the reviews of other people and being able to compare my impression of a movie with theirs. However, I don't understand why so many people submit a movie review and feel they have to give a full summary of the plot. After reading the main review which covers the story line,I wish reviewers would just give their opinion of the film. No need to repeat the story over and over. We get it. Not too sure how realistic this story was. Seemed a little over the top but certainly drove home the point about the gambling issue. Fun entertaining "sports" movie but looking at it from a totally different angle. Football was just the vehicle for showcasing some people with some real personal issues.

LeonLouisRicci You know what's more Boring than Watching a Boring Football Game on TV? Watching Men Sitting Around Watching a Football Game on TV...in a Movie. You get a lot of that here along with Interspersed Scenes of Matthew McConaughey Flexing His Pecs and Al Pacino Flexing all of His Performances into Another Familiar Slick but Kinda-Sick Character.There are Many Problems with this One Including Intense People "on the phone". Now that makes for a Riveting Movie. Or how about the Speeches about Addictive Personalities that are as Muddled as they are Pop Psychology Pedantic.This is By the Numbers Filmmaking all about Numbers. Another Film Grabber, Numbers are about as Sexy as Telemarketers. You get a lot of Both in this Uninspiring Movie. It isn't as Bad as Watching an Infomercial, but it is a Movie that's Central Setting is an Infomercial. So go for it if You must, just don't Expect Anything Very Suspenseful, like the Middle Part where a Billionaire gets Peeved at Losing some of His Millions. That, like the rest of this, goes Nowhere.

Prismark10 Al Pacino continues his run of starring alongside a younger rising star. In Two for the Money he plays Walter Abrams, domineering, highly strung sports book adviser and former gambling addict with a dodgy heart.Matthew McConaughey plays Brandon Lang, a former American Footballer whose out of the game permanently due to a knee injury but has an instinctive ability to call the game and game-plays.Abrams takes Lang under his wing as his protégé, grooming him, shaping him, changing his clothes, style and even his name as Lang picks winners and attracts big time gamblers who bet more on more each week.The film itself is standard text of a sports drama film with first you see the coaching of the young star, then his swift rise to the top and then the catalyst that leads to a decline before the film heads for a finish.In this case Abrams refuses to share the wealth with Lang who is now attracting high rollers and Lang hits self destruct and starts to pick losers affecting the company and his clients who are losing big time. Of course from very early on from Pacino's full on performance as larger than life Abrams, this is a person you can never keep up with and he is in fact warned early on by Abrams's wife played by Rene Russo.Of course the biggest problem from the outset is that we see Pacino play these characters before and you see a trail already as where this film is going. Also we have to swallow just because a person has played the game, understands the game he can call the game. In that case, surely other footballers could do the same? Sports is based on many factors such as mistakes, slips, bad calls and incidents rather than pure skill from the other side, it what makes the game exciting and difficult to predict.So what starts as mildly interesting is as predictable as a tame roller coaster ride. Nothing too exciting but both leads have charm enough to keep you watching.

Howlin Wolf I know that Pacino is a big fan of Shakespeare, so I thought I'd paraphrase old Will there to encapsulate how I felt about this warmed-over assembly of things that any alert audience has seen Al do before.He's one of my favourite actors, but it's hard not to say that some of his choices of late have been extremely lazy. I thought Walter Abrams was exactly like Walter Burke in The Recruit, except - ironically for a movie linked to gambling - the stakes weren't as high by the time he came around to doing it all again in Two for the Money. Unlike many people, I also enjoy the frequent 'shouty' aspects of his method - but come on, just because you're good at being loud doesn't mean you have to play a demagogue over and over again. Vincent Hanna in "Heat" was often loud, for instance, but he wasn't an overtly controlling, manipulative master of his universe like we see in "The Devil's Advocate"; "Any Given Sunday"; "The Recruit", or indeed here...Not to mention that this movie doesn't even do a very good job of showing an infrequent gambler like myself how the true expert "has to lose it all just to feel like they're alive". I don't buy this kind of talk that the movie peddles, at all. It feels too much like conventional wisdom that's been perverted and inverted, to me. I've heard of gamblers being in it for the 'highs and lows', but never for the 'lows and lows'. If that psychology were true, then a punter who loses a ton of money and soon finds themselves living in a cardboard box and eating from a dumpster still wouldn't have a problem. Why?! Because they'd be happy! Yet I've heard tales of lots of gamblers who are desperately unhappy with their lot, find it a miserable experience to lose an amount they can't afford, and would like desperately to rid themselves of this destructive compulsion. If I like something, then I don't want to give it up. It's impossible to feel elated by something and yet want to get rid of it. Contradictory. People who are tempted to take the leap are enslaved by the lure of a big win, which certainly does feel good, but the catch is that something like that comes around all too rarely to have any hope of exerting a positive influence in the long run.That's my logic anyway, and if I'm wrong then the movie doesn't explain its glib philosophies adequately enough to teach me otherwise. All this product trades on is a hypothetical synthetic adrenaline rush delivered by two stars on autopilot, with not a scrap of substance to be found beneath its shiny surface. In short, "Two for the Money" heralds a payoff that's not worth laying down cold hard cash for.