Desertman84 English Literature Professor Axel Freed has a gambling addiction that led him to having enormous amounts of debts in The Gambler.This drama stars James Caan,who is better known as Sonny Corleone in The Godfather,as Freed together with Paul Sorvino and Lauren Hutton.This film written by James Toback and directed by Karel Reisz takes a personal examination of a gambler.This is definitely on great character-driven film that has been overlooked in the 1970's.Credit goes to James Caan for commanding performance as Axel Freed.He keeps us interested throughout the film as we get to see him try to take actions to pay the gambling debts that he owe and try to somehow overcome his love for gambling but to no avail. Then,we get to see a great story of a man whom the viewer will definitely empathize and could definitely relate as a person try to battle a weakness that he currently has in life.While the movie may have been shown more than forty years ago,the message that it provides remains timeless and currently especially for people battling not only love for gambling but all types of addictions whether be alcohol,drugs or sex.

tomsview The air of anticipation and sense of dread that runs through "The Gambler", eventually gives way to a finale that is impossible to forget. Sam Goldwyn once said that it is the last five minutes of a movie that makes it memorable. "The Gambler" has that memorable last five minutes. In a performance of almost preternatural stillness, James Caan plays Axel Freed, a college professor with an addiction to gambling, Gambling rules Axel's life to the point where it undermines his loyalty to his family, his girlfriend and ultimately himself. He gambles on anything, but particularly college football and basketball games. Although he is absorbed with gambling, he comes from a privileged background. It is this back-story that gives "The Gambler" such an unusual edge. His mother is a leading surgeon at a large city hospital and his grandfather, who he reveres, is a wealthy Jewish immigrant who has made good on the American Dream. We learn that while his family's expectations of him are high, Axel has been indulged all his life.Axel is also seriously in debt and it is a condition that does not change much throughout the movie. Although he wins large sums of money, he invariably loses it again. Dangerously, he is in debt to people who do not forgive non-payment. After borrowing money from his mother to pay off the debt, he takes his girlfriend to Las Vegas and gambles it instead. It is a considered decision; it is as though he is forcing the odds to the point where he will be destroyed. He wins enough to pay all his debts including the one to his mother. Inevitably, he loses it all in a single reckless wager. His girlfriend, Billie played by Lauren Hutton, is the sort of woman who is attracted to men who exude a sense of danger. However, Axel proves even too reckless for her.To save himself, Axel is forced to convince one of his students to throw an upcoming basketball game. Although his debt is struck off, morally he has descended to the lowest point in his life. Finally, he receives the horrible punishment he seems to seek by pushing his luck beyond what it will bear in the wrong end of town. The film ends with a cinematic image not easily erased from the memory. If the film delivers any message at all, it is that the objective of the chronic gambler is to lose. Apparently the screenplay by James Toback was largely autobiographical; he must have been seeking some kind of catharsis through the painful self-revelations in this story.Karel Reisz directed the film in a dispassionate manner that adds to its power. James Caan gives a remarkable performance – what at first seems a rather wooden approach turns out to be the perfect approach. This is a film with little sympathy or compromise. It is difficult for the audience to like Axel. He is so alienated from everyday life and the normal things that give people joy that he is the epitome of the outsider. He is a man for whom life has little zest, the only way he can lift his emotional level is to walk along the edge of the precipice. An unusual background score helps give the film its all-pervading mood. Based on Mahler's Symphony #1, "The Titan", the score was arranged by Jerry Fielding, a remarkable composer in his own right. Despite its classical origins, Mahler's work in this film sounds contemporary and ominous. This is a film that sneaks up on you, it's only when it's over that you realise how remarkable it really is – without a doubt, one of the most intriguing films of the 1970's.

davisk957 Those viewers who wished a happy ending (and that's what they're really saying when they find the movie's ending scene weak/disquieting/unfulfilling/whatever) don't really understand the nature of degenerate gambling.And that's what this man is. Let's (as all gamblers do) put some %'s to it: arbitrarily I'll say 95% of habitual bettors play for the kick, the high, the thrill of the unknown outcome -- sports betting, casino betting, the turn of a card, they're all the same. Their motto of life might be, "If it moves, bet on it; if it doesn't, eat it." It isn't the win that's satisfying to them, or the money won -- because, you see, there's always the next game to get down on. Both a win or a loss is quickly forgotten, adjusted to, and forgotten. The next play is the only important one. Yet, to some extent or another, they keep it manageable, within the scope of their lives.Then there are the other 5% -- the really degenerate gamblers. Now to these guys (never heard of a female degenerate gambler, did you?) it's NOT the action they crave. It's the LOSS. Make sense? Of course not, because you're probably reading this as a rational human being, and self-destruction is hard to get inside of.But that's what this story is all about -- one of the 5%'ers.To an experienced sports bettor, the scenes like the indelibly memorable tub scene are all too powerfully true. How a win turns to a loss in the last second happens all too often. And how COULD those 3 college hoops games all go south, when they all had big leads at the half?? But examine two key turning points in the story: for dramatic impact, the writer imbues the protagonist with somewhat unlikely powers of recovery -- the Vegas comeback is the stuff of dreams, and the fix on the NYU game, keeping it under 7 points when all was lost with a minute to go -- those contrivances were needed to show the magnitude of this guy's disease. Had he been just a steady loser, he couldn't rise to the heights necessary to fall so far. Not once, but twice, he made a full recovery from the debts he owed. Yet he couldn't learn from it -- hell, he couldn't even take one night to sleep in peace.No, his desire for self-destruction had to be played out as it was, in a lurid hell far worse than casinos or calling the book again. He needed the self-degradation that only a Harlem pimp-fight could give him.I found the ending fitting, un-sentimentalized, and perfect for this unblinking portrait of a man who couldn't be satisfied until he'd thoroughly debased himself.Substitute a down-and-out drunk for the gambling addiction, and the story's been told many times. This should be assigned viewing in every GA meeting.

sol- A gritty, realistic film about addiction, it has a bit of haunting atmosphere to it, and although awfully dreary and a touch too harrowing for its own good, the film still packs a punch. Caan has a very interesting character, one who understands his own addiction yet still deceives himself, and he gives off a very solid performance, even though his character does come off rather cold and a bit hard to relate to. What the film shows us and what happens is quite predictable, but that does not prevent it from still having potency, and the ending certainly is not predictable, and is actually rather fascinating. The film's music score fits the project perfectly, and the driving sequences depict the character's feelings very well. Certainly this worth checking out, even if it is no cinema masterpiece.