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John Goodman
Review: 'The Gambler'
Review: 'The Gambler'

Mark Wahlberg takes on his most ambitious acting job ever in "The Gambler," a gritty remake of a 1974 film that starred James Caan. And the new gambler doesn't embarrass himself. Playing a college professor addicted to losing, digging a deeper and deeper hole for himself with loan sharks, underworld gambling entrepreneurs and his family, Wahlberg never gives away the game — that long, erudite speeches about Shakespeare and Camus are not his forte. But as Jim Bennett, one-time novelist turned arrogant assistant college professor with a gambling problem, Wahlberg also fails to let us taste the desperation. His fatalism, written into the character by William Monahan...