Owning Mahowny

Released 2003
Stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Minnie Driver, Maury Chaykin, John Hurt
Directed by Richard Kwietniowski

"Owning Mahowny" is about a man seized helplessly with tunnel vision, in the kind of tunnel that has no light at either end. He is a gambler. Cut off temporarily by his bookie, he asks incredulously, "What am I supposed to do? Go out to the track and watch?" Given the means to gamble, he gambles--thoughtless of the consequences, heedless of the risks, caught in the vise of a power greater than himself. Like all addictive gamblers, he seeks the sensation of losing more money than he can afford. To win a great deal before losing it all back again creates a kind of fascination: Such gamblers need to confirm over and over that they cannot win.

The film is based on the true story of a Toronto bank vice president who began by stealing exactly as much as he needed to clear his debts at the track ($10,300) and ended by taking his bank for $10.2 million. So intent is he on this process that he rarely raises his voice, or his eyes, from the task at hand. Philip Seymour Hoffman, that fearless poet of implosion, plays the role with a fierce integrity, never sending out signals for our sympathy because he knows that Mahowny is oblivious to our presence. Like an artist, an athlete or a mystic, Mahowny is alone within the practice of his discipline.

Summary by Roger Ebert

I like to gamble, but I can't imagine the compulsion felt by Dan Mahowny. The thing that's strange to me is at first he cared about whether he won or lost, but then he lost interest once he started embezzling from the bank. At that point, all that mattered was the action. He bet on every game and sport he could in amounts that expanded exponentially, and the outcome didn't matter much. I think it would be a blast to gamble millions of someone else's money, but Mahowny didn't enjoy it much. He just enjoyed the thrill of placing the bets. What I liked about this movie is how it showed the one-track mind of an addict without making him sympathetic. It's difficult to imagine why Belinda stuck with him or how he had any friends at all with his personality, and he didn't have time for those things anyway. He just wanted to gamble as fast and as much as he could before he got caught. --Bill Alward, February 16, 2004