Richie Furst (Justin Timberlake),
the hero of "Runner Runner," is a smart kid who tries to win his
tuition money for Princeton by playing some online poker. When he
discovers that the game is fixed, he hightails it down to Costa Rica to
confront vaguely legendary gambling tycoon Ivan Block (Ben Affleck),
and he allows himself to get drawn into the high life that Block
offers. Filled with lush views of tropical beaches, expensive parties
and apartments, and sumptuously beautiful but barely characterized
women, "Runner Runner" is the kind of meat-and-potatoes genre picture
that might be passable if the people involved in making it had given the
same thought and concentration to the development of the plot and the
ending as they did to the fairly involving set-up.
In its two male leads, "Runner Runner" offers a study in contrasts.
Timberlake is still obviously excited to be headlining a movie, any kind
of movie, and he takes everything he’s doing here with laudable
seriousness and interest. He holds the screen, and he loves being on it.
The film builds up to his meeting with Affleck’s Ivan Block, and
director Brad Furman gives this key character a visually striking entrance in a steam bath while screenwriters Brian Koppelman and David Levien
give Block an entertaining, chewy monologue that many other actors
might have made a meal of. But Affleck just sits there in the steam bath
and talks without inflecting anything and makes it extremely clear that
he doesn’t want to be acting in this movie or acting at all. He seems
irritated that he even had to memorize his lines.
Affleck has
always been a strange case. He’s been in films for twenty years now, and
he’s a star, but has any other star been as frankly indifferent as he
often seems on screen? (maybe Frank Sinatra
in some of his 1960s vehicles, but at least that indifference was
earned). His eyes are hooded and inexpressive, and his voice is
inexpressive, and his body seems sedentary even in movement. He has none
of the joy or need or skill of an actor, and he never really did.
Either he needs to find some energy for this kind of thing, or he should
just gracefully step back and direct movies or do something else that
interests him more, because his laziness in "Runner Runner" really just
won’t do. At the climax of the film, when his character is supposed to
look surprised, Affleck merely turns his head slightly and blinks his
eyes a couple of times, like an exhausted coquette.
As an
exercise in style, "Runner Runner" has its moments, especially early on,
but some of Affleck’s torpor seems to infect the film itself after a
while. Inventive framing and shot selection give way finally to
let’s-get-this-done conversations, filmed in unimaginative
shot/reverse-shot style. Recast Ivan Block with any number of actors and
"Runner Runner" might have been small-time but diverting fun. With
Affleck at its center, the film becomes a tedious study in a poker face
with other things on its mind.
