Owning Mahowny

Actors are investigators.
~Philip Seymour HoffmanIt’s the early ’80s. Bank employee Dan Mahowny (Philip Seymour Hoffman) has a low-key presence, wearing frumpy clothes and driving a car dumpy enough to give Columbo’s 1959 Peugeot a run for its money — this, even though Mahowny’s been given a promotion handling high-end accounts for the bank’s clients. Despite going out of his way to shuffle under the radar, Mahowny is also a world-class gambler, an addict who gets pleasure from nothing but betting — and he doesn’t even seem to get much pleasure from that.

I first became aware of Philip Seymour Hoffman in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 Magnolia (although I had seen him earlier in The Big Lebowski, 1998). Mahowny was his second lead role in film and he took the role vowing not to conform to “movie character” stereotypes. That he does. Hoffman doesn’t beg for sympathy like the stars of some gambling movies, nor does director Richard Kwietniowski make the world of casinos look glitzy and glamorous. For thespians, Owning Mahowny is a 100-minute acting demonstration. Hoffman submerges himself into an inscrutable, unlikable, and unknowable (by the other characters) presence, with only one steely purpose: to bet and to win.

Embezzling funds from his workplace, Mahowny needs cash to cover debts already incurred and more cash to bet more, on anything available: horse races, basketball games, and trips to Atlantic City. It’s here that the film lives up to its name, as everywhere Mahowny goes and nearly everything he does is recorded, documented, stored, and analyzed: by cameras at his workplace, by the owners of the casino (where he becomes known by under cover employees as “The Iceman”) and even by the police department as they listen in to Mahowny’s phone conversations with his dubious bookie (Maury Chaykin). The more Mahowny tries to keep a low presence, the more his actions single him out.

Acting as both Mahowny’s nemesis and enabler is Victor Foss (John Hurt), the Mephistophelian owner and surveyor of the casino, surprised when his usual methods to entice and pull in gamblers don’t work on Mahowny, who he looks on as a “purist.” Hurt, who worked with Kwietniowski previously, gives a much needed lift to the movie’s tone, a reminder that what Mahowny tries to succeed in is manipulated by powers bigger than his resources. Also commenting on Mahowny’s situation is his naïve girlfriend, Belinda (Minnie Driver, in a ridiculous wig which attempts — and fails — to obscure her beauty).

Owning Mahowny is based on the true story of manager Brian Molony, who embezzled over $10 million from a Canadian bank, as related in Gary Ross’s 1987 book, Stung. The arrest and conviction of Molony resulted in changes to Canadian bank laws and procedures.

It’s my belief that Hoffman could so convincingly play such roles by drawing upon his own experiences with addiction. He struggled with drug addiction much of his life and, after many years of living clean, relapsed shortly before inadvertently killing himself of a drug overdose in 2014.

—Michael R. Neno, 2018 Nov 25