Al Pacino may be one of the greatest actors in history. But when he gets phone-it-in roles like he does in \Two for the Money,"" his performances are as interesting as watching a TV rerun you've seen a million times-you know exactly what you're going to get.
Pacino plays a man in charge of a large organization with a cigarette-tinged voice, a propensity for quick-witted insults and a screaming diatribe here and there-sound familiar? Unfortunately, his performance is far from being the only paint-by-numbers feature of this dreary film. ""Two for the Money"" is about the questionable, yet totally legal ""sports advising"" industry, involving sports experts recommending to clients what bets to place.
In other words, it's stock brokering without as much real-world significance-this film is ""Wall Street"" or ""Boiler Room"" with a less interesting subject. Rounding out the cast along with Pacino as company head Walter Abrams, are co-producer Rene Russo as his voice-of-reason wife Toni, and Matthew McConaughey as his hot-shot young recruit Brandon Lang.
The script, which in an amazing coincidence was written by Russo's husband Dan Gilroy, reaches for every clich?? in the brokerage mini-genre: the cubicle-bound advisors frantically yelling on the phone at clients, the prostitute Pacino sets up for McConaughey, and the one-man personification of how the business hurts real people. There's basically nothing in this movie that you haven't seen before.
Like Pacino, McConaughey relies on his bread-and-butter persona, but unlike Pacino, whose unwound, distraught man-of-power shtick is tired but still reasonably satisfying, McConaughey's Texas pretty-boy routine has hardly ever been more annoying. With his unpunished licentiousness, million-watt smile and tendency to work shirtless, he's impossible to root for, and yet, like so many movies, ""Two for the Money"" wants you to. When, on Brandon's first day on the job, Pacino sends his lovely secretary to give him a passionate good-luck kiss (because, you know, that happens in real life), it's hard to believe that he would even care.
""Two for the Money"" might have had some interesting character angles if Brandon ever got seriously cut down to size. The main dramatic arc of the story hinges on the fact that, after a phenomenal run of predictions (explained only by the fact that Brandon ""knows the teams""), he runs into a string of equally phenomenal bad luck, a veritable case of sports advising block (explained only by... nothing). Brandon remains his cocky self throughout.
As his company's fortunes are hinging on Brandon's picks, Walter begins to unravel in a very familiar Pacino-like way, and Russo is given the job of being the one who holds them all together, without much more of a personality assignment than that. The ending is as predictable as they come, and also concludes with a confusing moral, seeming to imply that sports experts' picks are just luck (when, all ethics about gambling aside, it's obvious they are not). If you bet on the fact that audiences won't like this film and win, that won't require a lot of luck either.
