#absolute winner

New Post has been published on http://www.newsnish.com/entertainment/celebs/you-bet-its-good-two-feckless-but-lovable-gamblers-sienna-miller-superb-as-a-hooker-and-a-film-thats-an-absolute-winner/

You bet it's good! Two feckless but lovable gamblers, Sienna Miller superb as a hooker and a film that's an absolute winner

A wonderfully observed character study of a pair of compulsive gamblers on a road trip, Mississippi Grind is also a study of a slice of Americana that we don’t often see in the movies; shabby, even a little sleazy, but mostly honest, and populated by folk who exude a kind of jaded optimism, reckoning that around the next corner there might be a better life, although probably not. Ben Mendelsohn is absolutely superb as Gerry, a down-at-heel real estate broker with an ex-wife and a daughter he never sees, in hock all over town and unable to pay off his gambling debts due to an irredeemable habit of staking whatever he has in his pocket on the next card game or dog race. The start of the film finds him listening to a tape, analysing the body language of the poker player. He learns that the player who sits lower and lower during a hand is progressively revealing his weakness, and indeed the film progressively reveals Gerry’s weaknesses.

He’s a loser, but such is the sensitivity of Mendelsohn’s performance, that he is impossible not to like. His luck changes not with the big payout he craves, but when a charismatic stranger at the same poker table stands him a glass of top-quality bourbon. This is Curtis (Ryan Reynolds), an adventurer and romantic only slightly less feckless than Gerry himself, but with more charm.

Reynolds was woefully miscast in his last big-screen outing, Woman In Gold, but this is a peach of a role, which he blesses with the performance of his career. Gerry and Curtis become friends, and it is a tribute to the quality of writing (by indie filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, who also directed), as well as the acting, that we don’t have any idea how their relationship will evolve.