63
There are some effectively suspenseful moments in the movie, particularly during the gambling sequences, but one longs for more context and probing into the psyche of an ordinary man with an extraordinary compulsion.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
75
At its best, Mahowny is intricate, engrossing, wryly funny, and strangely poetic.
70
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
Kwietniowski might have tried for some edginess that would express a measure of the excitement Mahowny is experiencing. Despite the driven intensity of the banker, the film threatens to slip into the lifelessness of the drab world it depicts.
75
Portland Oregonian by Kim Morgan
Owning Mahowny may at times feel futile in its colorless, disheartening subject matter, but that's the point -- to see how barren Mahowny's life becomes. Hoffman gives the film relevance.
60
Dallas Observer by Luke Y. Thompson
There could have been life in the material, but no one involved save Hurt and Collins seems to have taken the time to find it.
50
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
Ironically, it's most engaging when the focus shifts to Hurt's matter-of-factly amoral enabler, whose glistening suits and jewel-colored shirt-and-tie combinations suggest a particularly poisonous tropical reptile.
80
Washington Post by Michael O'Sullivan
As channeled by the extraordinary Hoffman, Dan Mahowny is less a freak than a nerve-deadened Everyman with the courage to search for something that makes him feel alive.
100
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
There have been many good movies about gambling, but never one that so single-mindedly shows the gambler at his task.
60
Just doesn't give us enough to hold onto, perhaps partly because it's executed with so much restraint and subtlety. It's often a tense, uncomfortable little movie.
75
Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea
An unflashy but fascinating meditation on addiction and greed. The junkie was clearly Mahowny, but the greed, in a way, was everybody else's: the bankers', their flush clientele's, and the casinos', all busy feeding his habit.