Two for the Money
Two for the Money
R | 07 October 2005 (USA)
Two for the Money Trailers

A former college athlete joins forces with a sports consultant to handicap football games for high-rolling gamblers.

Reviews
Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing
CommentsXp Best movie ever!
Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.
Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
thekarmicnomad I am not a massive sports or sports movie fan. But then this film is more about gambling, ambition and greed.The main character is sucked in to a new and exciting world by Al Pacino's character who takes eccentric to new levels.The film is fairly slow and the plot flows along fairly gently, which is just as well because there really isn't a lot of substance to it.The characters are engaging and just enough happens to keep you interested.The majority of the film centres around the affect of success and the motivations that drive the successful on.This is good for an idle Sunday afternoon. Good performances and production but nothing special going on and no fireworks.
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.
KineticSeoul This movie is basically a gambling movie on football taken seriously. This is a okay film but also forgetful, even if it had some amusing moments which started from the beginning. But it starts to get a bit tedious and really starts to drag. I thought Al Pacino was the highlight of this movie, not that Matthew McConaughey but he just made the film more exciting than it really is. The characters in this film just doesn't stand out that much and you just don't really care for them, the outcome at the end was sort of intense but besides that it was a average film about gambling on football where people invest in there wisdom. There was just too many scenes in this film with Matthew McConaughey having his shirt off and working out which I thought was pointless, although some girls might enjoy those scenes even if it slowed down the movie even more. They tried to give to much sympathy to the characters as well, but it just doesn't really work cause it just show there greed throughout most of the movie. Al Pacino basically carried this film without him it would be below average on the emotions of gambling with some drama thrown in.7.1/10
leplatypus Al is a great actor so it's very annoying to see movies where he's a bad guy. It's like a dear friend turning into an enemy! You know all his capacities but sadly he uses them in a bad way! There, he plays a cynic and Machiavellian boss of a sports counseling firm. His motto is to turn his collaborators into money vacuum by all means. In a great scene of collective therapy, you understand that he is really ill.Beyond Al, the cast isn't really interesting (McConaughey is a masculine Playmate, never missing an occasion to show his body, Russo not much convincing) and the story a bit obscure: if sports bets are illegal, how can they advise freely? Why do they say it is tax-free?