Runner Runner

A good thriller does certain things. It tenses the audience's muscle, it creates a sense of dread in the pit of their stomach, it twists their expectations and it throttles their nerves. Bad thrillers don't do much. They keep the audience at a distance; they are empty films. Runner Runner is not a good thriller, and not surprisingly, as gambling thrillers usually fail to impress. The concept is always the same. The house always wins until a clever kid comes along and the house loses.

Richie (Justin Timberlake) is a college kid who had a short-lived career in Wall Street. Trying to pay his tuition fees, he gambles all his savings on an online poker site and loses. Richie is convinced that he has been cheated and takes a plane to Costa Rica to tell online gambling mogul Ivan Block (Ben Affleck) that there is cheating on his site. Block is so impressed he offers Richie a job just as the FBI is moving in on the operations and as Costa Rica is becoming a bad host. Despite a good cast, it is hard to ever care about the characters or be engaged in their actions. The filmmakers seem indifferent as well. The actors, the style and the plotting all suggest that the characters aren't overly motivated or worried themselves. They are just empty shells.