Brian Mahowny
Brian Molony
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.
Brian Mahowny True Story
Owning Mahowny is based on a real-life incident: Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce clerk Brian Molony embezzled over $10 million from his employers in just 18 months to support his gambling habit. Molony's story was told in the best-selling 1987 book Stung by journalist Gary Ross, which formed the basis for the screenplay. Philip Seymour Hoffman played the lead of the 2003 film by the name of Owning Mahowny. His character, “Dan Mahowny”, was created to represent Brian Molony in the film. His character, “Dan Mahowny”, was created to represent Brian Molony in the film. When a major losing streak leaves him busted and unable to cover his losses, Mahowny develops an ingenious plan to play the bank against the casino. But with time running out and the odds stacked against him, obsession becomes compulsion and the thrill of the bet is quickly replaced with a primal desire to stay in the game. As Brian Mahowny, Philip Seymour Hoffman delivers a complex and layered performance. His character is constantly tormented and his internal turmoil is physically expressed by Hoffman with an economy of movement and expression.
There have been many good movies about gambling, but never one that so single-mindedly shows the gambler at his task. Mahowny has just been rewarded at work with a promotion and a raise. He drives a clunker even the parking lot attendants kid him about. His suits amuse his clients. He is engaged to Lisa (Minnie Driver), a teller who is the very embodiment of a woman who might be really pretty if she took off those glasses and did something about her hair.
Brian Mahowny
He is so absorbed in gambling that even his bookie (Maury Chaykin) tries to cut him off, to save himself the trouble of making threats to collect on the money Mahowny owes him. 'I can't do business like this,' the bookie complains, and at another point, when Mahowny is so rushed, he only has time to bet $1,000 on all the home teams in the National League and all the away teams in the American, the bookie finds this a breach of ethics: He is in business to separate the gambler from his money, yes, but his self-respect requires that the gambler to make reasonable bets. When Mahowny moves up a step by stealing larger sums and flying to Atlantic City to lose them, he encounters a more ruthless and amusing professional. John Hurt plays the manager of the casino like a snake fascinated by the way a mouse hurries forward to be eaten. Hurt has seen obsessive gamblers come and go and is familiar with all the manifestations of their sickness, but this Mahowny brings a kind of grandeur to his losing.
The newcomer is quickly singled out as a high-roller, comped with a luxury suite, offered French cuisine and tickets to the Pointer Sisters, but all he wants to do is gamble ('and maybe ... some ribs, no sauce, and a Coke?'). Hurt sends a hooker to Mahowny's room, and a flunky reports back: 'The only woman he's interested in is Lady Luck.' Certainly Mahowny forgets his fiancee on a regular basis, standing her up, disappearing for weekends, even taking her to Vegas and then forgetting that she is upstairs waiting in their suite. (The fiancee is a classic enabler, excusing his lapses, but Vegas is too much for her; she tries to explain to him that when she saw the size of the suite she assumed they had come to Vegas to get married: 'That's what normal people do in Vegas.') It is impossible to like Mahowny but easy to identify with him, if we have ever had obsessions of our own. Like all addicts of anything, he does what he does because he does it. 'He needs to win in order to get more money to lose,' one of the casino professionals observes.