The Gambler

Mark Wahlberg stars in this fast-paced crime drama, which follows the travails of a down-and-out literature professor with a dangerous addiction to gambling. The screenplay from hugely successful writer William Monahan (best known for multi-award winning crime drama The Departed) and is directed by Rupert Wyatt, whose previous re-working of an old classic resulted in the incredibly successful Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Fitting, then, that The Gambler is another re-make, this time of a 1974 film of the same name, written by James Toback.

Wahlberg (Boogie Nights, The Fighter) plays Jim Bennett, a desperate English literature academic whose gambling habits find him in debt to a series of unsavoury characters. In the role of underground gambling mobster 'Lee' is Alvin Ling, and as loan shark Neville Baraka comes Michael K. Williams (The Road, Twelve Years a Slave), who has already proven himself a seasoned expert in such suitably grizzly roles.

As Bennett’s iceberg of problems spiral, he chooses to beg for help from his mother, played by Jessical Lange (Big Fish, Cape Fear) and, later involves the innocent students of his class, raising the stakes once more in this already frenzied turmoil. The Gambler may not be the most challenging of films, but, this ferociously tense thriller will no doubt provide audiences with an action-packed heap of entertainment.