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Mississippi Grind

1/17/2017

18 Comments

 

B+
​3.43

A sad-sack gambler meets his lucky charm, convincing him to go on a gaming pilgrimage down the Mississip'

Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck
Starring Ben Mendelsohn and Ryan Reynolds
Initial Review by Sean Riley

Picture
They say misery loves company.

Mississippi Grind is a road trip story of degenerate gambler Gerry (Ben Mendelsohn) and his good luck charm new friend Curtis (Ryan Reynolds). Mississippi Grind asks a lot out of the 2 leads to carry the film start to finish by putting them on a road trip never spending too long in any stop and they absolutely deliver.  The introduction of Gerry and Curtis is an absolute homerun.  Gerry listening to Joe Navarro’s 200 Poker Tells (6.99 for Kindle at Amazon, use the link below) before walking into a casino where he is obviously a regular, his messy hair, his posture, his sad face - the viewer knows Gerry is a lifelong loser before he speaks a word.  Our first look at Curtis is a cool confident operator.  Reynolds shows through Curtis that he is the best in Hollywood at playing disarmingly charming, entering the poker game as an outsider at a table full of regulars and very quickly wins them over with that charm.  After the tourney at the bar, Gerry tells the barman he placed 3rd and immediately bet the winnings on a basketball game showing his addiction, then tells Curtis he placed 2nd, showing his character. The two of them get wasted and bond over a rainbow, and gambling.  Curtis is Gerry’s lucky charm and Gerry is a buddy for Curtis to hang out with before Machu Picchu time.  

Of Gerry and Curtis they're both tremendously played but Curtis is much more interesting due to his layers.  Curtis is fun, confident, even talented.  He describes his secret as being that he doesn't care whether he wins or loses.  He's a nomad and only as we go on this voyage do we start to uncover his motives for staking total stranger Gerry 2 grand for the trip.
​
A few brief moments of honesty are given as clues along the way that Curtis is more like Gerry that it seems.   While Gerry is guessing his age Curtis remarks not to confuse age with experiences.   Their time with Simone and Vanessa in St. Louis.  Curtis begins to get excited at the idea of Simone joining the trip until she shuts him down suggesting she might need to turn some tricks along the way because she knows exactly how this story will go.  While never outright spoken, I imagine Curtis' stories are largely autobiographical, that he was the one who put himself on the casino ban list in Michigan.  When we eventually meet Tony Roundtree of the high roller poker game he seems more like he'd be someone Curtis has owed money to than the subject of the tales. Between his obviously cold relationship with his lounge singer mother and his experience of his grandfather chopping a toe Curtis is uncovered to be a man with emotional trauma whose charming extroverted persona and nomadic lifestyle are a defense mechanism for allowing people to actually get close to him.  Where Gerry's addiction prevents him from quitting while he's ahead or even cutting his losses Curtis' is his inability to feel like he deserves to win.  He enters poker tourneys and quits early instead of playing them out, he claims to not have money just to get beat down after playing basketball. 

It didn't seem right that they ended up winning.  Gerry put his daughters picture in the visor as a sign that his realization that he bet 1/4 million on a dice roll may have a lasting effect.  Curtis was finally going to Machu Picchu.  I think the previous 90 minutes or so told the viewer this happy ending was probably not permanent but Gerry broke on a bus back to Iowa to meet his cat who had likely been murdered by his debtors would've been so much more depressing.

A
18 Comments
Bryan
1/17/2017 10:32:37 pm

Watching sad people is not my thing. The only realistic show on TV I'll watch is basketball or baseball. Everything else is a comedy or other world fiction.

Mississippi Grind is real, very real. Gerry plays an incredible sad gambling real estate agent. At no point until the last the basketball "game" and after did I feel like anyone was acting.

Watching this while spinning is Andy pleasant, but as I stewed over it I was more impressed with its emotion and realism.

The bonanza at the end was garbage and there was a bit too much predictably at the poker hands and horse race. My other complaint was seemingly on queue B-reel footage of each location. If you're going to have characters in a city, show them in the city.

The feeling I have leaving a casino was with me very uncomfortably after watching this movie. I was at C+ in the moments during watching, I'm at a B now.

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Jon
1/19/2017 11:59:52 am

I'll agree that the poker hands are predictable based on where the movie needs Gerry and Curtis to be, even as they are realistic poker hands. However, I'm not as bothered by the ending as you are. It's enough to drop me to an A- from an A, but that's it. Sometimes, you go on runs. I agree with Riley that the movie's nigh-unbearable if they lose everything.

While the big run is convenient (why stop at one double or nothing, why not two?), I think it's passable for two reasons. This is a happy ending for Curtis, but not for Gerry, because there is minimal evidence he won't blow all that money. With movies about gambling addicts, the opportunity to walk away is about as happy an ending as there's going to be. Maybe he paid everyone back, or maybe he drove immediately to the next casino. The other reason is the Schrodinger's Box aspect to the safe, where half the time, Curtis' money is going to be in there, and the other half, Gerry took it all. I love the suspense of Curtis about to open it, and each outcome being equally possible. That Boden and Fleck give their protagonists two good conclusions in a row isn't so offensive when they roll credits before the third, likely bad, conclusion.

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Jon
1/18/2017 12:58:14 am

Reposted from a Side Piece review. I'll have more to add about the ending, coming soon.

http://www.mediocremovie.club/side-pieces/mississippi-grind

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Bryan
1/18/2017 11:35:11 am

Search engines have a hard time finding your side pieces. Be sure to add the title to the tags on the side of the post.

Also, I needed to be subscribed to this post.

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Creepy
1/18/2017 01:25:19 pm

You never want your ol lady to be able to just Google your side piece.

Shane
2/2/2017 04:31:43 pm

Super creeper

Sean
1/19/2017 10:55:08 am

I'm glad your old side piece review mentioned the the characters being relatable. It's not hard to imagine a scenario where 3 or 4 members of the MMC, self included, run into some personal shit and become a version of either Curtis or Gerry. I know every time I go gambling I have a set dollar amount I start with and assume it's lost before I start and just want to have fun hanging out (Curtis). Also, while I'm playing I'll work my stack up hit a bad beat where I have split twice and doubled once only to see the dealer with a 7 card 21, get pissed and bet 3 times as much as I normally would on the next hand to get it all back immediately (Gerry).

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Admin
1/18/2017 08:50:10 pm

Replies to initial review.

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Bryan
1/18/2017 08:50:38 pm

"but Gerry broke on a bus back to Iowa to meet his cat who had likely been murdered by his debtors would've been so much more depressing."

That would have made for a much more real/true/better movie.

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Lane
1/20/2017 12:45:43 am

With “Mississippi Grind,” I loved so much about this film…except the last 15 minutes. Unlike others, I’m a fan of sad, simple movies about sad, complicated people. Perhaps it’s because I relate too much. If there are three or four people in the MMC that run into “personal shit” when watching this film as Sean suggests, then count me in.

What was there to enjoy for me? For one, I’m a fan of travel stories, and I generally like buddy narratives too. “Mississippi Grind” comes from a hard-worn, honest root in a deep American tradition. You can sense a Twain-sian influence: two flawed, yet moral characters floating down the river towards New Orleans where some twisted notion of freedom (which actually turns out to be its own form of slavery) offers a new start and new life.

But I like to think of Gerry and Curtis more in the Kerouac mold: they’re a modern Sal and Dean from “On the Road.” Kerouac’s genius was the way he peeked into the gutter of the “Leave It To Beaver” culture of the ‘50’s and exposed the country’s rotting guts that most people in Eisenhower’s America preferred to ignore. While we in the 21st century don’t have to look quite as hard for the cracks in society (they’re on A&E and Bravo reality shows every night), there’s no doubt that the cultural milieu of Trump’s America has reminded us that there are plenty of nasty parts of the world. We might glorify the profane in ways that ‘50’s and ‘60’s culture didn’t, but betting a few month’s rent in an illegal backroom poker game in Memphis so that your cat doesn’t get assassinated is pretty much the definition of a white trash bottom, and we still don’t see that on reality TV much.

Then there’s the final act, and here’s where I just had to get off the train. Maybe there’s a story out there, chronicled in a 1,500 word fluff piece from the March 1994 issue of People, in which a pair of lovable losers from the Midwest strike gold by putting a quarter million on the pass line on a craps table in New Orleans (would’ve been a good story). But let’s be realistic...when you step into a casino, the odds are already against you 7 to 1, and at a game like craps, it’s higher than that. And I know that movies aren’t supposed to be realistic, but if you pass your movie off as realistic for an hour and half, stick to the narrative physics! For a movie that staked its first three quarters on a fictional Southern cinema verite, this pair of losers finally winning seemed like a narrative bet that didn’t pay off.

Would it have been super depressing to see Gerry jump off the roof of that casino? Sure. Would we liked to have seen Ryan Reynolds need serious therapy to get over his implicit assisted suicide role by blessing a stupid bet? That's the worst "Deadpool" sequel ever. But Boden and Fleck weren’t making a Hollywood film here, and nothing up to those last minutes indicated it. Thus, by giving us a saccharine ending, even if the eventual results betray the character’s worst tendencies, I felt the filmmakers betrayed the characters and the story as well.

This story starts with a rainbow, but the insinuation in “Mississippi Grind” was that Gerry and Curtis somehow overcame their nightmarish OZ and made it to Kansas. I’m pretty sure they only made it back to Iowa. They had a little too much luck in the last part of this film to make me truly believe they were losers.

Grade: B

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Lane
1/20/2017 12:57:55 am

Also, Sean's initial review and Jon's Side Piece should both be nominated for a Mediocrity for this movie.

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Jon
1/20/2017 09:14:37 pm

For ease of reading:

Depictions of gambling addiction are often hard for this viewer to stomach. I've walked past an empty craps table and felt the pull of the dice, and I've stayed at blackjack tables past the point where I'm having any fun. Short of some ironclad financial discipline, I can imagine a scenario where a weakness for the instant gratification that gambling can provide takes an ugly turn. Seeing exactly that happen onscreen hits close to home. Mississippi Grind captures the highs of gambling, rushes so powerful that everything else slips away and possessing the means to recreate it becomes more important than dignity or shame. It also captures the crushing feeling of the bad beat and the intense self-loathing that goes along with it, while also containing two of the best lead male performances of 2015. Anna Boden's and Ryan Fleck's fourth collaboration, and their second about some kind of dependency, is one of the best depictions of gambling I've ever come across, while also bringing the kind of emotional honesty that I've come to expect from their work.

Mississippi Grind begins in Gerry's (Ben Mendelsohn) car. In preparation for a poker session at an Iowa casino, he listens to a well-worn series of tapes about recognizing and interpreting body language, the better to help him get an advantage at the table. Once inside, he's greeted as a regular by name by the staff and the players. However, he doesn't recognize Curtis (Ryan Reynolds), a loquacious and charismatic player who immediately charms the table. After the game, Gerry again runs into Curtis at a bar, and they drink the night away telling stories about this or that gambling run. The next day, they run into each other again at a dog track, followed by another long night drinking. Gerry, inclined to read too much into coincidences and under the gun with a loan shark, proposes to Curtis that they take a road trip down the Mississippi, stopping at every casino on the way before culminating in a $25,000 poker game in New Orleans. The unattached, nomadic Curtis isn't one to pass up a potentially good story, and agrees to the trip.

Once on the road, the degenerate duo proceed with their plans to varied results. St. Louis proves a bonanza, as Gerry takes down a riverboat game in the kind of realistic hands that seldom make their way into cinematic representations of poker (looking at you, Casino Royale). While Gerry plays, Curtis gets reacquainted with his on-off escort girlfriend Simone (Sienna Miller), who brings a friend (Annaleigh Tipton) for Gerry. Curtis and Simone's relationship is only hinted at, but it's apparent that they've known each other for a long time. Tipton's character, Vanessa, spends a chaste and charming evening with Gerry, partaking in magic tricks, piano playing, and honest conversation, deepening the reservoir of goodwill towards him. In Memphis, Gerry's luck takes a turn after a longshot bad beat, putting the trip at risk. In classic problem gambler fashion, stopping is never an option, and Gerry just gets more desperate to get to the big New Orleans game, which will surely turn it all around. Earlier, in St. Louis, Simone asks Curtis why this companion is different from all the ones before. Based on his eventual behavior, she was right to be skeptical of Gerry.

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Jon
1/20/2017 09:15:08 pm

Boden and Fleck's film relies on some pretty repulsive behavior to power its plot engine, and therefore requires an amount of audience buy-in to the characters, lest they suffer a repeat of Mark Wahlberg's The Gambler and end up rooting against the protagonist. To that end, they couldn't have cast this film better. Mendelsohn's Gerry has a serious problem that manifests itself in theft, but there's a sadness in his eyes that keeps him sympathetic. Mendelsohn goes full sad-sack here, with plenty of shame etched into his craggy face. On the multiple occasions where Gerry is lying or stealing, it elicits a sigh from the viewer instead of a scowl. Reynolds isn't far off from his baseline persona, but it's finely calibrated and naturalistic in a way I've never seen him before. His Curtis loves people, and wants to know everything about everyone he runs into. Never condescending, he's the best role Reynolds has had in his career. He and Mendelsohn complement each other nicely, in good times and bad.

The research period for Mississippi Grind must have been fun, because Boden and Fleck get gambling as well as anyone. The thrilling highs and devastating lows are depicted with equal accuracy. The hot feeling of shock that comes from a loss washes over Mendelsohn's face more than once, but the ecstasy of an unstoppable run, where probability fades away and the exact right card or roll comes every time, makes it clear why some people cannot help but keep coming back. All that Gerry has left is a belief in magic, that the universe is talking directly to him. He's been cursed by being forced to listen all the time. Mississippi Grind is that rare film about addiction that makes the viewer want to engage in the negative behavior onscreen, because it nails the allure. What else is cinema for than to transport the viewer into something they can't, won't, or shouldn't experience? A-

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Drew
1/29/2017 02:25:46 pm

The ability to relate to the story makes it good. Add reality and it is great. That was what Mississippi Grind gave.

There was much to be taken from the story and my fellow MMC members already mentioned them. But, outside of a handful of films, does it not seem that Ryan Reynolds plays the same character and it appears to be a charming yet complicated one? Had Reynolds been dressed in his Deadpool outfit, neither the story nor the quality of the film would have changed that much.

Everything about Mississippi Grind was compelling until its final twenty to fifteen minutes. There were off the mark moments that needed cut.

The ending was nice and neat and Boden and Fleck walked a fine line in its positivism. That usually does not turn out well because negative endings are better than positive ones but here viewers got more good than bad and it worked. Had Gerry lost, the ending would have been cliche because he was down on his luck in nearly every aspect of his life. Since he won, that was also cliche because Curtis was Gerry's rabbit foot.

The negative parts were twofold. Curtis never answered or returned the call of Simone and viewers assumed Gerry went back to Iowa and paid off his debts, whereas he could have gone into that $60 buy in poker table and lost everything. As viewers subconsciously know, films must end and the way Mississippi Grind did was its best option.

This was a solid film. Good story and casting. The blues songs were incredible and well timed throughout the story. Just the last several sequences were off but it deserved high marks.

Grade: A-

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Shane
1/30/2017 09:57:51 am

Slow moving on purpose
A happy ending, but sour
Helps if you know cards

A-

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Cooker
2/2/2017 12:13:30 pm

The entire movie I was thinking to myself, someone needs to release Gerry from Gamblor’s neon claws.

I honestly don’t know what else to say. Going B.

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Gamblor Minion
2/2/2017 04:47:18 pm

HAIL GAMBLOR

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John Robert Peters, Jr.
3/10/2017 04:51:53 pm

Pretty good movie. I could see myself in that situation.

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