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Not as good as I had expected.

The Gambler is the story of a man who owes a lot of money to a lot of people, because of his gambling addiction. That man is Jim Bennett (Mark Whalberg) and he is a college English professor. Jim goes through a complicated process throughout the movie to get the money he owes, and that's the basic plot of The Gambler.

The trailers for this movie make it look really exciting and thrilling, but The Gambler is anything but that. The Gambler is a very slow moving movie and can really drag at times. I found myself pretty confused during the movie, and it gets pretty complicated towards the end, but I feel like I got the basic idea of the movie. The movie has it's share of cliches and I didn't find the story to be all that interesting. I really had to try hard to be interested in the movie, but the truth is that it can be really boring. There are some good moments in it, but they're few and far between. Let's talk about acting.

For the most part, Whalberg did well in this movie. I was never really blown away by his performance but it was still decent. He has some good scenes with long monologues and he delivers them well. I found the scenes in the classroom especially compelling and interesting, because Whalberg shows more energy in those scenes then he does in the rest of the movie. Whalberg did fine, but don't expect to be blown away by his performance.

I feel bad for saying so, but I felt like Brie Larson was possibly miscast in this role. Even though I find her to be very pretty and liked SEEING her, I was never truly compelled by her performance in the movie. Sorry Brie.

One of the best parts of the movie is Jessica Lange's performance. While she doesn't have very much screen time, every moment she was on screen she did a fantastic job. She does an amazing job playing the strong mother, and she delivered her lines perfectly. Jessica Lange's performance is definitely a huge plus for this movie.

Another big plus for this movie is John Goodman's performance. John Goodman only has a handful of scenes, but most of the time he is on screen he's delivering a long monologue. I wasn't a big fan of the dialogue in the movie, but John Goodman's scenes were written very well. His scenes were certainly some of the best parts of The Gambler, and probably partly why this gets a higher rating than it should.

I thought the camerawork was very good in this movie. Framing and lighting was very good and you can tell that the director of photography knew what he was doing. Camerawork is another big plus for this movie.

The soundtrack to The Gambler has a large mix of music, and I thought that the songs were picked well. This may even be a soundtrack worth owning. So, yes, music was good in this movie.

Overall, The Gambler just isn't that great of a movie. It can be very boring and confusing, and the dialogue, for the most part, wasn't all that great either. There's a lot more bad than good in this movie, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that I wasted two hours. There were scenes that I'm glad I got to see, like Jessica Lange's scenes, John Goodman's scenes, and the scenes of Whalberg in the classroom. The camerawork was especially good, and the movie was full of varied and good song choices. But other than those few things, there isn't much else that great about this movie. But hey, if you want to see it, be my guest. Who knows, you might like it more than I did. I guess you could say that it's a gamble.