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I love this movie so much

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

MY MARKERS ARE DUE ON Monday, is what everyone says in this film from the street punk, to the loan shark to the mob boss, to the god damn governor of the state. Like any guy Ritchie film there are several levels of the underworld and like an onion we keep peeling and peeling. And like a guy Ritchie film everybody is an interesting character. Besides the threats and the torture there's comedy, one lines, you really care for these half wit Neanderthals that break into your home and steal your knew wide screen for a fix. I love films that start off with some hustler be-bopping and scatting just to survive another 24hours. Here we have a coke head wall street douche bag that does million-dollar deals everyday in the stock market and comes out ahead. However as good as he is in stocks he's horrible covering the over under in the San-Diego vs. Seattle. One layer of the onion is watching the bookie do his monologue as he tortures the two-bit gang-member. Who in-turn does the same dialogue as he tries to torture a two-bit hustler.

Do you remember as a kid seeing one of those rock tumblers? Maybe you saw it in a comic book or a friend had one? You'd put a rock in, it would spin around and after a while the rock would come out all smooth and polished and cool looking. Well, Player 5150 is like a rock that didn't spend enough time in the tumbler. Parts of it are smooth and polished, parts of it are rough and jagged and it doesn't seem to be all one thing. It is still a little cool to look at, however.Joey (Ethan Embry) is a California stock broker who spends remarkably little time in the office. A little of that seems to be because the folks who made this movie didn't really understand what a stock broker does for a living, but mostly it's because Joey is what they used to call a "degenerate gambler". He doesn't feel alive unless he's got money riding on something, particularly sports. Joey has a beautiful wife named Ali (Kathleen Robertson) who's an important volunteer on the governor's re-election campaign. He's also got a bookie named Tony (Christopher McDonald) who works out of the kitchen of his restaurant with his ginormous thug Beno (Bob Sapp). Joey's also got a rich client named Nick (Bob Gunton) who, unbeknownst to Joey, is also a bookie. Nick is several steps up the criminal ladder from Tony, though.This story basically takes place from a Friday to a Monday. Joey owes Tony $60,000 and places additional $10,000 bets on four football games. If he wins, he'll only owe Tony $20,000. If he loses…well, I think you can guess whether or not Joey loses. That leaves him needing to come up with $100,000 by Monday or, and Tony is pretty clear on this, Joey's going to get hurt quite badly. There's also a college kid named Dwayne (Patrick Mapel) who only has until Monday to pay the $10,000 he owes Tony. Monday's important because that's when Tony has to pay back the money he owes to Nick, who also happens to be owed by the unhappy compulsive gambler married to the governor Ali works for. Nick squeezes Tony, who squeezes Joey and Dwayne, who scramble around trying to find a way to cover their losses. Everything eventually spins to a fairly decent ending, which is then capped off with a remarkably stupid dénouement.Player 5150 isn't bad. It's got some nice acting, especially from Bob Gunton, Christopher McDonald and Kathleen Robertson. There's a scene where Ali has discovered some of the ugly secrets of her husband's life and Robertson does an affecting job of conveying Ali's conflicting emotions without having a single line of dialog. It also helps that Robertson is truly stunning, the sort of woman that men used to carve into stone because they couldn't bear the thought of her beauty ever fading.The film also sets up a interesting dynamic where characters mirror each other. Tony plays tough guy with Dwayne, threatening him and roughing him up. We also see Dwayne as the bookie for another college student who owes him money, doing a cruder, less capable version of the same act. And Nick does an even sharper, more menacing version of the same thing when he pressures Tony to pay his debt.But after making it seem like the story was going to say something about the nature of gambling and gamblers, this movie fritters it all away for a melodramatic turn into a relationship drama. The various subplots come together in a too pat and disappointing fashion to serve the big question of whether Joey and Ali will end up together after going through hell. It's not at all what you'd expect from watching the first half of the film, and I don't mean that in a good way.There's also too much extraneous stuff here. There's a character who pops up to have one conversation with Joey, disappears, the shows up again toward the end playing a pretty significant role as apparently Joey's best friend. I'm not sure that part was at all necessary. I know the story didn't need to have girlfriend for Tony. Maybe they just wrote her in because they got Kelly Carlson from Nip/Tuck to be the movie, but she doesn't serve any purpose. Player 5150 also makes way too spotty use of narration. There's a bit at the beginning, nothing for 50 minutes, a bunch of narration to paper over a montage, nothing for another 30 minutes, then finishes up with another blast of voice over. I'm also not sure why Joey's gambling is established as thrill seeking behavior at first, then morphed without explanation into a self-loathing, self-destructive impulse. And it seems like half of the subplot with the governor's wife was cut out of the script and what was left didn't have much of a point.This film is like a journey where you have an okay time getting where you're going, but when you arrive you realize you haven't gotten anywhere. It's not a bad way to spend some time as long as there's nothing better to do.

Avoid this movie at all costs, everything about it is bad, especially the ending which is almost comical.Here's a hint to American film makers who want to make a movie about the world of the gambler. Gambling is legal in many countries, in fact betting (bookie) shops were legalized in the UK in 1961 ! This means that to many audiences the whole notion of the penniless gambler running away from a bookie who wants to break his legs is just an archaic stereotype.The gambling world should be a fountain of stories for movie makers to film. Instead we normally get the dumb and dumbered down type of nonsense that Player 5150 represents.

Player 5150 is a great film for the authenticity it brings to screen. A rare gem in the rough. By comparison to all the special-effect driven overblown budged movies being released today, Player 5150 is a character-driven story that takes you through every range of emotion. David O'Neill (Writer/Director) does a great job inviting you, no daring you, to identify with the main character Joey, (Ethan Embry) who is a compulsive gambler and whose life is about to spin out of control. As you do, you experience a taste of that "unique rush of excitement" that a real gambler feels when they are up and are winning, but when luck runs out, the finality of what it means to lose hits home and the darker side of gambling emerges.Enter Tony (Christopher McDonald) a ruthless no non-sense loan shark. In my opinion, I thought McDonald delivered an award winning performance along with Bob Gunton (Nick) in showing the raw, gritty, and sadistic reality found on the losing side of the coin of gambling. Where gamblers gamble for the thrill and the rush, loan sharks are about greed. As you travel along at 200 mph with Joey in the fast-lane of a gambler's life, McDonald is the proverbial brick-wall-reality-check smiling sadistically back at you as you slam into him. A gripping performance was delivered also by Kathleen Robertson (Ali), who played Joey's wife giving us insight on what it is like being in love with someone who has a self-destructive addiction. My only criticism would be about the ending. I felt that this movie could have had any number of endings and it would have been alright, but it seemed like an ending couldn't be decide upon so they creatively worked them all in somehow. For me, it made the ending fuzzy and gray instead of a bold clear contrast which made the rest of the movie gripping and powerful.As an overall experience, I enjoyed watching the movie very much. It kept you constantly leaning forward in anticipation of what would happen next. If you enjoy fast-pace action-drama and character-driven stories, then highly recommend Player 5150 as it delivers.