Synopsis
Dan Mahowny was a rising star at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. At twenty-four he was assistant manager of a major branch in the heart of Toronto's financial district. To his colleagues he was a workaholic. To his customers, he was astute, decisive and helpful. To his friends, he was a quiet, but humorous man who enjoyed watching sports on television. To his girlfriend, he was shy but engaging. None of them knew the other side of Dan Mahowny--the side that executed the largest single-handed bank fraud in Canadian history, grossing over $10 million in eighteen months to feed his gambling obsession.
Your Movie Library
Cast
- Philip Seymour HoffmanDan Mahowny
- Minnie DriverBelinda
- John HurtVictor Foss
- Maury ChaykinFrank Perlin
- Ian TraceyDet. Ben Lock
- K.C. CollinsBernie
- Jason BlickerDave Quinson
- Vince CorazzaDoug
- Sonja SmitsDana Selkirk
- Roger DunnBill Gooden
Recommendations
- 100
Chicago Sun-Times
There have been many good movies about gambling, but never one that so single-mindedly shows the gambler at his task. - 80
Washington Post
As channeled by the extraordinary Hoffman, Dan Mahowny is less a freak than a nerve-deadened Everyman with the courage to search for something that makes him feel alive. - 75
Portland Oregonian
Owning Mahowny may at times feel futile in its colorless, disheartening subject matter, but that's the point -- to see how barren Mahowny's life becomes. Hoffman gives the film relevance. - 75
Premiere
At its best, Mahowny is intricate, engrossing, wryly funny, and strangely poetic. - 75
Philadelphia Inquirer
An unflashy but fascinating meditation on addiction and greed. The junkie was clearly Mahowny, but the greed, in a way, was everybody else's: the bankers', their flush clientele's, and the casinos', all busy feeding his habit. - 70
Los Angeles Times
Kwietniowski might have tried for some edginess that would express a measure of the excitement Mahowny is experiencing. Despite the driven intensity of the banker, the film threatens to slip into the lifelessness of the drab world it depicts. - 63
USA Today
There are some effectively suspenseful moments in the movie, particularly during the gambling sequences, but one longs for more context and probing into the psyche of an ordinary man with an extraordinary compulsion. - 60
Dallas Observer
There could have been life in the material, but no one involved save Hurt and Collins seems to have taken the time to find it.
