“Runner Runner”
Directed by Brad Furman
Starring Ben Affleck, Justin Timberlake, Gemma Arterton, Anthony Mackie, John Heard, Oliver Cooper
Crime, Drama, Thriller
91 Mins
R

While not nearly as intelligent or edge-of-your-seat as his last effort, The Lincoln Lawyer, Brad Furman‘s Runner Runner is an easily digestible thriller elevated by a sly performance from Ben Affleck. As a businessman-cum-villain, Affleck is the grinning face of rampant capitalism embodied. His character Ivan Block has harnessed the “greed is good” mantra of Wall Street and etched it up a notch, stopping short of nothing to make another dime… or so the film tells us.

However, upon delivery of the goods, Furman comes up short. Like a poker player holding his cards until the last moment, he never really brings the Block character to full-menace, summoning hearty pangs of disappointment from the thrill-hungry audience. But this is a common trend of the film: a slow-play that ultimately reveals a losing hand.

For all his efforts to turn something as intangible as online poker into a exciting experience, the promising sense of a well-dressed thriller fades quickly and we feel about as duped as the legions of online poker addicts gambling away their life savings. Luckily, we get away only having lost about an hour and a half, as little of Furman’s build up amounts to anything at all. It’s just left to wither away without ever accomplishing much or really saying anything. While it hardly gets down and dirty in the realm of the truly terrible, it’s a forgettable bag of movie mulch, tied-and-tethered to a sinking stone.

Princeton grad student Richie Furst (Justin Timberlake) is a gaming junkie. Not the type likely to spend his college tuition on a night of online poker, no, instead Furst tempts other Princetonians to pursue various gambling .coms and gets a cut of their losses. As one of the few people who herd traffic to these gaming sites, Furst knows that he has a better-than-average sense for the game and so hubristically puts his entire college tuition on the line (“Oh no he didn’t”) to make ends meet.

Lo and behold, Furst gets scammed, finds mathematical certainty of his being ripped off, and flies to Costa Rica to confront the man behind the curtain: the illusive Ivan Block. At some beachside vista, he meets Rebecca Sharan (the gorgeous Gemma Arterton) and flirts his way into a party to meet with Block. Right here, we run into our first issue (that is if you’re not counting Timberlake’s opening monologue where he tells you all about himself rather than letting it be revealed over time…but I digress). We’re told how impossible it is to get a meeting with Block from no less than three characters and Furst just waltzes up and bam, it’s meet-and-greet time.

Intellectual inconsistencies like this pepper the rest of the film, revealing the dangerous “tell” that this movie won’t even play by its own rules. With that knowledge, any urgent sense of danger melts away like butter on the popcorn required to digest this caliber of flick. Though these little dollops of stupidity don’t necessarily stand out quite so boldly while you’re in the midst of watching Runner Runner, upon reflection, the lack of foresight is as clear as a fold on a two-seven-split (that’s poker terminology for quit while you’re ahead.) No single moment is so egregious that it’s offensive on its own, but taken in junction with the fact that nothing really comes of anything that’s said or done, the truly frustrating nature of the film is revealed.

Anthony Mackie in an over-sized suit makes a run at Furst, threatening him with banishment from the US if he doesn’t come forward with proof of Block’s ill-doings, but he’s about as intimidating as a schnauzer in a clown costume. That is, he’s all bark and no bite. But that seems to be the point of all this: a lot of talk backed up by very little walk.

Behind the camera, Furman doesn’t accomplish anything that hasn’t been done before but he admittedly didn’t have much to work with, coming off a pipe bomb of a script from longtime duo Brian Koppelman and David Levien (Rounders, Runaway Jury). It’s about as paint-by-numbers as it comes, borrowing from the thrillers of the 70s, 80s, and 90s that we’ve seen so many times before. The romantic subplot, thrown in there for kicks and focus-group ratings, is about as hot as a winter morning in Maine. Both Timberlake and Arterton may be fine specimens of nature but their whimsy flirtation provides a trainer-bra level of support for any of the emotional gravity that’s supposed to come from them. We just know exactly how everything is going to shape up before it gets there, making the journey along the way as familiar as the morning commute.

Furman’s last, The Lincoln Lawyer, was a surprisingly rousing success, however, it seems he learned little from that triumph. Where that provided edge-of-your-seat suspense, this falls behind in the first leg of the race and never manages to catch up. Even the name of the film, a tip-of-the-hat to a poker play where the turn and the river (the final two cards in play) end up significantly improving your hand, is unintentionally ironic. Where a runner-runner depends on the end of play bettering things, in Runner, Runner the finale peters out and flips no trump cards.

It’s not quite bad enough to stand too firmly against but it’s far too soft to inspire any level of recommendation. Ultimately, Runner Runner is best left for a lazy Sunday when you’re half-watching but mostly invested in your smartphone or a periphery conversation.