I find myself struggling to write about Brad Furman’s Runner Runner, a dull, dumb thriller which has been ideally released at the beginning of autumn, right when the summer season has officially died, and the “prestige” season is just gearing up. Here is exactly the kind of movie that should be lost in the cracks. A yoghurt-bland, forgettable film with a forgettable story, no real moments of anything approaching human authenticity, and enough supple attractive actor flesh to keep you vaguely distracted on a Tuesday morning.
The attractive actors on display are Justin Timberlake and Gemma Arterton, who lock eyes at a party, and frustratingly continue to lock eyes throughout the film, when both they and the audience keep longing for them to lock pelvises. Timberlake plays a super-smart casino number-cruncher-slash-gopher who possesses one of those always-stubble beards that perhaps require so much maintenance that he wouldn’t be able to crunch any numbers afterwards. More handsome flesh is offered up by Ben Affleck, proving that he is sharp and professional even with dunderheaded material like this, and who seems to be the only actor who is, ironically enough, not in this for the money.
The characters are all in it for the money, of course. Runner Runner is a film about an ambitious Princeton student/TA named Richie Furst (get it?) who was once a successful stockbroker of some kind, but, post-Crisis, has been reduced to paying for his expensive college tuition by shilling for online poker tournaments. When he perfunctorily discovers that he was cheated out of $17,000 by the very site he shills for, he decides to confront the president of the said site in his criminal lair in Costa Rica. This is poker mogul Ivan Block (Affleck), who brings way too much heft to this role than it possibly deserves.
Ivan offers Richie a job, although it’s clear to us that Richie will eventually be doing increasingly immoral things to earn his keep. Before you know it, Richie will be standing on a pier, watching Ivan coat rival gangsters in buckets of chicken fat before dangling them over a crocodile pit. Yes, that happens in the movie.
I used the word “perfunctorily” above, and I’m forced to use it as a thesis for this movie. Every plot point is so thuddingly obvious and gracelessly displayed, Runner Runner almost feels like a movie that was made by an editing program. The characters are not allowed to display genuine emotions, and are treated like plot ciphers. Dialogue assures us that Richie is shrewd and intelligent, but he is constantly doing dumb things. For a long time, Richie doesn’t think he is doing anything illegal (hint: If you’re going to bikini parties in Central America on a regular basis, you’re probably doing something illegal). Richie is warned that if he tries to leave Costa Rica, Ivan will kill him. Or maybe the Feds (represented by Anthony Mackie) will arrest him for something. When he does try to leave, and he is indeed busted by the Feds, he explains nothing and only behaves in a suspicious manner. This makes Richie look less like the intelligent and resourceful genius he is constantly touted to be (even by the Feds), and more like a good old-fashioned sucker.
Arterton is a lovely actress, and here she is dipped in bronzer and given an epic coiffure that would make some of the girls in Pantene ads cry. She is then wrapped in the tightest, most flattering dresses the costume department could afford, and asked to bat her eyes and bite her lip and flirt with Justin Timberlake. She seems to have the easiest job. I can’t say much for her glorified floozy character (who would be one dimensional once she were given one dimension), but she is certainly a sight to behold.
Runner Runner is the kind of movie that shoots for all the right elements – sexy locales, twisted crime, a man in over his head – and kind of flops it out before the audience without any style or charm. It’s almost perfect in how disposable it is.
Witney Seibold is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly articles Trolling, Free Film School and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
