PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 10/7/05)

Ever get the feeling when you're watching a movie that the whole thing was made just to set up one supreme groaner of a pun? (Incidentally, the same applies when reading most Anthony Lane reviews.) In the case of Two for the Money, which basically amounts to The Devil's Advocate set in the world of high-stakes sports betting, the final scene finds Brandon Lang (Matthew McConaughey) coaching a pee-wee football team. One of Brandon's pee-wee players asks, "Do you think we can win tonight?" and suddenly there's McConaughey grinning with the answer you just knew was coming: "I'd bet on it." Roll credits.

The joke puts a disconcertingly light coda on one of those Icarian cautionary tales Hollywood pumps out every so often to keep the American Dream in check, the kind where if sudden, no-strings-attached success sounds too good to be true, it probably is. For two tension-packed hours, we've watched Brandon go from failed football star to big-time sports gambling advisor, picking million-dollar winners with an unheard-of 80% accuracy without ever placing a bet himself — this in a world where even weather forecasters are lucky to be right half the time. And now he's cracking jokes with a 10-year-old?

It's as if to say: Don't take this warning too seriously, even if it does claim to be based on a true story. But Two for the Money is only interesting insofar as it reflects the facts. It's a big deal if a hotshot was plucked from a 1-900 call center in Vegas to come work a big-time New York boiler room, where his predictions came true so often he started to believe he was the one deciding the games. What would it take to reduce such godlike confidence to the point he's flipping a coin over the biggest game of the season?

The instant you cast Al Pacino as Brandon's mentor (dementor?), all that changes, and Two for the Money commits itself to being just-a-movie. Satisfying as Pacino is to watch, he's his own worst enemy in roles like this because you simply can't separate the actor from the performance. Over the years, Pacino's Method has become his madness, and now, whether he's playing Shylock or Satan, he doesn't become the part so much as the part becomes him.

As the actor fulminates to the point of giving himself a heart attack, we've seen him frothing at the mouth for so long, it's impossible to tell whether this character is weaker than others he's played or if Pacino's increasingly high-strung performances have finally escalated to the point of spontaneous combustion. Meanwhile, the only consolation a sidelined McConaughey gets is that the movie literally gives him that lame last laugh.—Peter Debruge