Review of Runner Runner (2013) by Mloy X — 06 Aug 2014

Ivan Block (Ben Affleck): "This is your job. You want a clear conscience, go start a charity. But if you want your own island and your boss says you gotta go out there and take a beating, you go out there, take it and come back to work and say, 'do you need me to do it again.".

I must begrudgingly admit, I actually liked this film in spite of the fact that the lead is played by Justin Timberlake (no offense to his acting skills but he's no Jessie Eisenber, who normally ends up playing characters like this) and the villain (although he did do a decent job of it) is played by Ben Affleck. The one silver lining in this film is that Gemma Arteton plays the resident eye-candy and I love her! She is so talented and so super-sexy, I so wanna be her when I grow up! ^_^ Anyhow, the story was interesting enough, granted, most of the technical jargon was lost on me, which probably helped sell the film because I got dazzled by all the techno-speak (now, whether or not its accurate is another matter but I couldn't tell anyway). The cast's chemistry was good, they all played well off of each other; the conclusion seemed like a cop-out but it was different and overall, a satisfying ending. So surprisingly, I found this film entertaining and well-paced, good cast and quite tolerable. The film was better than I expected (and that's coming from someone who thinks Ben Affleck couldn't act his way out of a paper bag).