Year 2012. Howard Ratner owns a small jewelry store in New York. As a big NBA fan, he cannot imagine life without betting on games, so he is deep in debt and is constantly hiding from creditors. One day, an accomplice brings him to the store of the leading player of the Boston Celtics, Kevin Garnett, and at the same time a parcel arrives from Ethiopia with rare uncut black opals. Enchanted by their brilliance, Garnett literally sticks to this piece of rock, asks to borrow it for a few days and leaves a champion ring as a pledge. Howard immediately lays down the ring in a nearby pawnshop and bets on the Celtics game for the proceeds.
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At one time, one great Russian writer had such a novel, and it was called the Gambler.
In this film, the viewer is invited to plunge into the atmosphere of excitement of the modern world for two hours. So, the main character is a New York jeweler of Jewish origin (judging by the picture, there is no other origin for New York jewelers), he drives an expensive Mercedes, he has a country house and an apartment in the elite part of the Big Apple. that he is all in debt as in silks. In addition, he has all the attributes of a rich man – a wife, children, and a mistress. The wife is disappointed and considers him ridiculous and insignificant, the mistress considers him a cash cow. Everything is fine, everything is like everyone else’s. But only our hero is the ‘Gambler’ with a capital letter.
The picture was filmed in an unusual way, it keeps you in suspense from the very beginning to the last scene. The world around is not just boiling, it is boiling, money and expensive things move from the pawnshop to the pockets and back at incredible speed. The hero barely manages to re-mortgage one in order to settle accounts with the other. And at first it seems that this is all just for the sake of money.
But it would be so ordinary and boring if not for the real reason. And she is covered in excitement. As far as I personally understood the character of the hero, he simply cannot live otherwise without being in debt and without playing bets. This is already something akin to sadomasochism – when you can not take risks and not run from various thugs-collectors, not get in the face, and at the same time be rich. But so boring, isn’t it? This is, I would say, the most important ‘trick’ of the picture – in the disclosure of the psychology of the player, while not a one-sided player who brings honestly earned pennies to the bookmaker’s office, no!
Our hero is a high-stakes player, he bets tens or even hundreds of thousands, not even his own money, but he can already win millions, he himself lives in the game, in some way turning life into a tote. He tries to think through complex schemes, two steps ahead, to influence the result and in the end to break the bank. If gambling is a drug, then in this case the person is taking the most severe varieties of this drug.
The end result is ‘charged’ with endless dynamics, a truly action-packed film that keeps you on your toes from credits to credits. And of course, one cannot fail to note the wonderful idea with which the picture begins and ends. This is a very successful decision – only a couple of minutes of screen time was spent, and the idea of ​​the film no longer looks like just ‘excitement for the sake of excitement’, but acquires a certain philosophical note about the frailty of our entire existence and the transience of life.
Info Blu-ray
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (84.2 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Audio
English: Dolby TrueHD 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
Subtitles
English SDH.
