By STEVE PERSALL and BRIAN ORLOFF
Published July 17, 2003
"Owning Mahowny" a sure bet
Owning Mahowny (R) (104 min.) - Based on a true story, Richard Kwietniowski's movie is a character study acted with consummate detachment by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Detachment, that is, from everyone around him, even the camera, as his character devotes all his attention to gambling and the desperate measures taken to finance it.
Dan Mahowny (Hoffman) is a Toronto bank vice president by day and a betting machine on nights and weekends when he sneaks away to Atlantic City or Las Vegas. A bad run of luck has him owing $10,300 to bookies. His first mistake is forging a loan to cover that debt. Then he can't stop. Before the end of the film, Dan has siphoned $10.2-million from the bank, the largest one-person bank theft in Canadian history. And he has blown it.
Hoffman's portrayal of Dan is deceptively bland, the same way the real embezzler must have been to pull off this vicious cycle as long as he did. His eyes rarely stray from the task at hand, whether it's another bogus bank document or another craps table. Owning Mahowny is reminiscent of Catch Me If You Can with its tale of obsessive theft and looming capture, but Hoffman isn't a charming rogue like Leonardo DiCaprio. Dan is a pathetic creature of bad habit, isolated by his vice from everyone at work and his girlfriend Belinda (Minnie Driver, left) at home.
That isolation intrigues Victor Foss (John Hurt), an Atlantic City casino boss who loves taking Dan's bankroll yet strangely admires his focus. Dan resists Victor's attempts to treat him like a high roller, declining Pointer Sisters show tickets, a prostitute and gourmet meals. Dan is so intent on gaming that he sees Victor simply as a well-dressed waiter, asking only for a plate of ribs, no sauce and a Coke, adding a question mark to the request as if he's asking too much. It's easy to see why Victor is fascinated.
Director Richard Kwietniowski paces his film slowly, allowing Dan's compulsion to evolve in the same way James Whale's Frankenstein deliberately traced the creation of a monster. The filmmaker's understated style shortchanges some of the plot's potentially tense moments when Dan's crimes are almost discovered. Maurice Chauvet's screenplay occasionally makes Dan's coverups and his surveillance by police so complex that the twists wash right by.
The cat-and-canary relationship between Dan and Victor makes up for those deficiencies. Each man inspires the other to react in ways completely at odds with their true personalities. Hoffman and Hurt revel in those contradictions, a sensible guy gone over the edge and a card shark pulling against the house.Owning Mahowny takes its time getting to where destiny is bound to take it, but those two actors make the trip worthwhile. B+
- STEVE PERSALL, Times film critic
Flight of fancy
Winged Migration (G) (89 min.) - True, director Jacques Perrin's stirring documentary, Winged Migration, is all about birds. But it's less Discovery Channel and more a cinematic event. The Oscar-nominated film captures what it might feel like to fly, to soar alongside its subjects as they migrate during the winter months.
Some bemoan its lack of scientific insight, but who cares when the vistas are this stunning? If you want facts, read a guidebook.
Perrin and his crew, more concerned about aesthetics, caught the migrating birds on ultralight aircraft-borne cameras. Some crew members flew in hot air balloons. And many of the birds were destined for stardom even before hatching. To assure the birds would be accustomed to the filming, the crews exposed eggs to the bustle of airplanes and camera equipment.
And Perrin's technique succeeds, especially in the arresting opening shots that catch the birds flying low over Paris, flanking the Eiffel Tower and ascending. Equally marvelous, one scene focuses on cranes, with their sleek white bodies, squawking and clamoring to escape the icy winter. As they fly over a mist-laden river, their reflections ripple below in the water. Pictured here are Barnacle geese.
Though the film is lean on facts, Perrin appears, now and again, as a narrator delivering weighty pronouncements in his French accent. "A story of migrating birds is a story of promise - the promise to return," he offers at the film's start. Trying to be helpful, Perrin peppers the film with unnecessary bromides that clutter it and detract from the mood of wonderment he masterfully builds.
Much of that atmosphere comes from Bruno Coulais' score, with its rich Gallic pop roots and understated strings. Aussie pop star Nick Cave contributes a brooding tune, To Be By Your Side. As we watch, the music cues us and we wonder: Will the birds make it safely?
The film does include its share of conflicts, often manufactured scenes wholly composed in the editing room. The fictitious scenes don't detract from the film per se - remember purists, this isn't exactly a documentary - but some are too treacly, like a scene where a bird liberates itself from a wooden cage.
Perrin does include the requisite shots of hunters and comments on the hierarchy of the animal kingdom (in a scene where a bird with a broken wing falls prey to lunching crabs), but his message is veiled.
Ultimately, it's Perrin's focused cinematography and deference for his subject, not his politics, that matter. B
