Tutto o Niente

Can you change a person who's addicted to gambling? Even more important, should you trust this person with money? Well you will find out once you watch this. The main character is very well cast and you get a nice supporting cast too. It's overall pretty decent for a movie of this kind but nothing special.

We also get treated to a love story and we know that there will be drama about the money. The brother figure gives this a whole different spin, though you are excused if you think there are quite a few glitches in logic to enhance drama. But that is how this works most of the time. Good enough, but nothing too exciting

"The urge to gamble is so universal and its practice is so pleasurable that I assume it must be evil." - Heywood Broun

Win It All is an unusually dark/light tale of card-gambling addiction because it subverts the usual notion that overcoming the addiction is just a McGuffin plot device. For Eddie (Jake Johnson), it is a matter serious enough to welcome us to join in his pain of avoiding the thing he loves to do and is not good at--gambling.

Eddie is asked to hold a bag while the owner does 6 months' time. Eddie is not to look in the bag, and if he is good about all this, he will earn $10,000. You can guess what happens to this compulsive gambler when he sees the money inside and foolishly convinces himself he can borrow, gamble, and return.

The pleasurable plot is that this rudderless gambler really tries to go straight, with some side roads to gambling, while his brother, Ron (Joe Lo Truglio) and sweetheart, Eva (Aislinn Derbez) try to coax him the right way. The story is never easy to figure ahead because he is such a loose cannon, capable of screwing up any good thing he starts.

Director Joe Swanberg lets us like Eddie while we're fearful of his ability to fall. We try not to invest in him, but he continues to screw up while we root. Eddie is a bit like Adam Sandler's Howard Ratner in Uncut Gems: ready to make a bad gamble at any moment but charming so we care even though we know he will disappoint us all.

The beauty of this 88 min melodrama is Eddie's character and the other characters who hope for Eddie's best. In that way Swanberg and co-writer Johnson create a semi-harrowing tale powered by character that ignores usual formula for gambling films.

"Win It All" is a film about a guy who is floating through life, never accepting responsibility. He is also a gambling addict, which is partly to blame for his lack of maturity. He knows he needs to reform, but he cannot muster the willpower. Like most gamblers, he is always waiting for the big payoff to pull him out of his hole, and fate sends him an opportunity to regain fiscal fitness--if he can just control his impulses.

This is a solid kernel of an idea for a film, and Jake Johnson feels committed to the part of the main character, Eddie, but the film never reaches its potential.

Much of the story feels clichéd and the characters are underdeveloped. This is most noticeable with Eddie's romantic relationship--with Eva (Aislinn Derbez, who feels like she has more to contribute). The development of their feelings for each other is cheated by many brief scenes that sometimes feel like a montage.

This may be due, in part, to editing, but the writing is the main culprit. In scenes that should carry some weight, there is inadequate exposition. It's like watching a Cliff's Notes version of a film.

The ending is abrupt and underwhelming. It's unclear if this was intentional or if it was due to the inadequate build-up of dramatic tension.

(Flash Review)

Step into the life of a gambling addict, Eddie. Eddie makes a pittance now and then and immediately flushes it away. Out of the blue some sketchy guy he knows, presumably from the gambling world, offers him $10K to watch his duffle bag for 6-9 months without opening it, as he is checking into prison for a brief stretch. With zero willpower, he opens the bag and finds rolls of cash and dangerously gambles with it, losing much. Yikes! With positive life options brewing such as steady job and girlfriend will he overcome his addiction and the hole he dug himself? This was a stressful, tightly scoped and lightly tense watch. Good acting with an average story; room for improvement. An enjoyable enough drama.

This movie review can be quite short. The acting is decent and the directing is also pretty good but the part this movie is lacking is a good plot. The movie is not that long but still felt boring at sometimes. I would say this movie fits more into the drama genre but has the ingredients of a thriller while pretending to be a comedy. The plot is way to straight forward and the characters in the movie lack depth. But not everything is negative because if i find a movie bad i'll just turn it off and allthough i thought about it i watched the whole thing. (Good thing the playing time isn't that long.)

I was expecting more of a poker/gambling movie but instead you just watch a pretty normal guy with a mild gambling addiction work himself in to trouble. Then he does what every normal human being would do and he tries to get back in to the sadle of life by living a fairly normal life. It's all pretty straightforward stuff and this movie could use a bit more spice in the plot. The movie is average at best. Lacks the depth for a drama, lacks the plot for a thriller and lacks jokes for a comedy.

The whole movie feels like a flat line which is not what most people are looking for in a movie. If you're just looking for an easy straightforward movie this one suits just fine. If you're however looking for more entertainment and excitement this is not the one. You're probably better of watching a favorite classic over again.