It amazes me how the real life stories of tricking the system in gambling, always seem to be more compelling as documentaries than as movies. This real life story sounds impressive as a news article (which it was based on), but as a movie falters because the characters and their struggles are not that compelling.
They try to have a love story, and a villain, but everything feels fake and slow. Even cringey sometimes. I don't know if it was because they tried to be faithful to the true story, but there is never a sense of adventure, neither excitement for the money being won.
At the end of the movie they reveal the amount they won in total: $27 million dollars. Never in the movie was it apparent that this was a life changing amount of money for anyone. It seems like everything was just spent in a lame Jazz festival without consequence. And that it was just a bit more money for people that had more than enough.
Makes me remember movies like A Simple Plan, where the stakes just keep getting higher and characters start transforming as the amount of money increases. I know the message of this movie is precisely that money doesn't matter as much as human connection, but even there the movie fails to have real, entertaining conflict between people.
It tries so hard to have those feel good moments, but for me, it always felt like it was trying and failing too hard.
They try to have a love story, and a villain, but everything feels fake and slow. Even cringey sometimes. I don't know if it was because they tried to be faithful to the true story, but there is never a sense of adventure, neither excitement for the money being won.
At the end of the movie they reveal the amount they won in total: $27 million dollars. Never in the movie was it apparent that this was a life changing amount of money for anyone. It seems like everything was just spent in a lame Jazz festival without consequence. And that it was just a bit more money for people that had more than enough.
Makes me remember movies like A Simple Plan, where the stakes just keep getting higher and characters start transforming as the amount of money increases. I know the message of this movie is precisely that money doesn't matter as much as human connection, but even there the movie fails to have real, entertaining conflict between people.
It tries so hard to have those feel good moments, but for me, it always felt like it was trying and failing too hard.