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Run Away

The premise of "Runner Runner" is simple: wiz-kid Richie, played by the incredibly charismatic Justin Timberlake, finds himself on thin ice promoting online poker among students at Princeton, where he's a grad student. When he goes all-in with his tuition money and realizes something fishy is afoot, he travels to Costa Rica to confronts the site's mogul owner, Ivan Block (Ben Affleck), who not only gives him the time of day, but takes him on as his protege. What follows strives for suspenseful and exciting, but like a poker player with a tell, it only really achieves predictability.

Frankly, it's surprising this movie was even made. The script, by writing team Brian Koppelman and David Levien (also responsible for "Ocean's Thirteen"), is mediocre at best and director Brad Furman ("The Lincoln Lawyer") does little to punch it up. Even the setting, beautiful Costa Rica, is underused: it's painted so gritty and corrupt, it's hard to understand why wealthy Block would make it his home base.

It's hard to be sympathetic toward Richie, whose arrogance and naivete are both suspect for a character whose past includes getting burned on Wall Street, and Ivan is villainous in an overly arrogant, tropey way that strives to be Gordon Gecko, but with less humanity. There is exactly one female character in the entire movie: Gemma Arterton as Rebecca Shafran, Ivan's right hand woman. As flimsy as a paper doll, she's does little more than sleep with Richie and pout - one wonders that in a film with so little actually going on she couldn't have been put to better use.

As the film progresses, Richie gets gormlessly sucked into Ivan's web of deceit and corruption, and played like a fiddle in the process. Sure, there's some suspense and some action, but it's such a foregone conclusion that it's difficult to really get into the movie. The only thing it really has to recommend it is its length: at only 91 minutes long, you're not wasting a ton of time. Is it worth running out to see in the theater? No, particularly not with "Gravity" as box office competition. On a cold day this winter it'll be a decent watch on TV, but for now: odds are you'll get more out of gambling the ticket price on a game of blackjack.