Owning Mahowny (2003) - Towering Hoffman performance centers gambling addict character study

♥♥♥♥

 

+ Best Canadian Movie of the Year

 

Co-star Philip Seymour Hoffman features most prominently on this eclectic poster for Richard Kwietniowski's Owning Mahowny

Successful bank manager Mahowny makes a dangerous digression, when at work he starts covering his increasing gambling debts using fictive customer loans.

 

Owning Mahowny is written by Maurice Chauvet (The Basement (2005)), based on the 1987 nonfiction book Stung by Gary Ross, and directed by Richard Kwietniowski (Love and Death on Long Island (1997)).

Philip Seymour Hoffman (Magnolia (1999)) is epically great as the gambler, (the person struggling with a self-destructive nature), and John Hurt (Lost Souls (2000)) is good as the casino boss, and Minnie Driver (Stage Fright (2014)) ditto as his loving wife. The plot is a downwards spiral without big wild developments, but it is well-told, and Hoffman makes Owning Mahowny a late-night gem of a film.

 

Related post:

 

2003 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II] 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 10 mil. $

Box office: 1.2 mil. $

= Box office disaster (returned 0.12 times its cost)

[Owning Mahowny premiered 23 January (Sundance Film Festival) and runs 104 minutes. Shooting took place around March 2001 in New Jersey and Ontario, including in Toronto. The film opened #59 to a 33k $ first weekend in 9 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #50 and in 24 theaters (different weeks), grossing 1 mil. $ (83.3 % of the total gross). It was only released in a little handful of other markets. Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, translating to 2 notches over this one. Kwietniowski returned with Regret Not Speaking (2011), which was seemingly never released and remains his last finished credit. Hoffman returned in Mattress Man Commercial (2003, short) and theatrically in Cold Mountain (2003); Driver in Hope Springs (2003); and Hurt in a short, a voice performance and a music video prior to his theatrical return in Hellboy (2004). Owning Mahowny is certified fresh at 78 % with a 7/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

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