Five Interesting Movies About Sports Betting

Hopefully, the emergence of sports gambling as a globally established hobby will bring a rise in film projects implementing this activity into their storylines. The offer of such movies right now is pretty bare, but in this article, we give you five options you can check out if you are into watching flicks that incorporate sports betting into their narratives.

Two for the Money

Directed by D.J. Caruso, of The Salton Sea fame, and written by Dan Gilroy, the man behind Nightcrawler and Roman J. Israel, Esq., Two for the Money is a sports-drama that tells the story of Brandon Lang, an ex-college football player who thrives in football game handicapping. Lang gets played by Matthew McConaughey, who does a terrific job of depicting a former star who, after suffering a career-ending injury, must re-shift his focus to the world of gambling, which accepts him arms wide open because of his extraordinary ability to predict match outcomes.

Al Pacino also stars in this Universal Pictures 2005 film, which failed as a commercial product, even though it boasted a star-studded cast that includes Rene Russo, Jeremy Piven, and Armand Assante.

Pacino plays the part of Walter Abrams in Two for the Money, a recovering gambling addict who is also the head of a sports consulting operation that takes Lang under his wing and introduces him to a life of luxury. We should note that this film primarily got negative reviews, but it is well worth watching for ardent sports bettors, especially those into NFL wagering.

Lay the Favorite

Here we have a comedy-drama that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012, produced by six production companies, including Wild Bunch, which is also one of this movie’s distributors, along with the Weinstein Company, via its distribution arm – RADiUS-TWC. The cast of Lay the Favorite is impressive, with the chief quartet consisting of Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Rebecca Hall, and Joshua Jackson.

Laura Prepon, Frank Grillo, Vince Vaughn, and Wendel Pierce add extra support to the film’s four main stars.

The narrative here revolves around Rebecca Hall’s character Beth, a cocktail waitress from Vegas who meets sharp gambler Dink Heimowitz, played by Bruce Willis, a bettor with a system. Dink hires Beth to lay big-cash wagers for him, and Beth surprises herself and her employer by swiftly grasping his system and becoming a protegee of sorts. Like Two for the Money, Lay the Favorite did not get much critical acclaim, but we like this movie because it incorporates Curacao into its story. That is the Caribbean nation that regulates most of our highlighted crypto sportsbooks.

Uncut Gems

Uncut Gems is a hyper-realistic tale of gambling addiction. It is a tension-filled movie that creates a unique atmosphere comparable to its creators’ (the Safdie brothers) previous film, Good Time. It premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in 2019 and got a limited US release through A24, an indie darling distributer. The National Board of Review named it one of the ten best films of 2019, and it got noted as one of the best-reviewed pictures of the year, with many critics citing Adam Sandler’s lead performance as Uncut Gems’ stand-out element. Many called it a career-best.

In the film, Sandler plays a Jewish jeweler, Howard Ratner, who is a massive problem gambler who loves to bet on NBA basketball. He gets his hand on a black opal, mined by Ethiopian Jewish miners, and lends it to NBA superstar Kevin Garnett, who believes the opal has special properties that will enhance his confidence and on-court game. Much of the plot of Uncut Gems is about Howard continuously putting himself in unsavory positions due to his inability to manage his impulses when it comes to betting. Running two hours and fifteen minutes long, Uncut Gems was a decent little hit, earning $50 million at the US box office and snagging Sandler an Independent Spirit Award and a Best Actor one from the St. Louis Film Critics Association. 

Big Shot: Confessions of a Campus Bookie

David Krumholtz is a name that many people will not recognize, but if they see this actor’s face, they will instantly remember seeing him in some TV show or movie, as Krumholtz has been on TV and theater screens for over three decades. Most recently, he appeared in Christopher Nolan’s mega-hit Oppenheimer (as Isidor Rabi). In 2002, he starred in a little-known TV flick directed by renowned horror director Ernest R. Dickerson, Spike Lee’s former cinematographer, who shot such gems as Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X.

Hollywood legend Mike Ritchie co-wrote Big Shot: Confessions of a Campus Bookie. That is the man who directed many old-time classics like Prime Cut, The Bad News Bears, Semi-Tough, Fletch, and many more. This was his final film, and it was dedicated to his memory. In it, Krumholtz is Beeny Silman from Brooklyn, an Arizona State student who is somewhat of a math genius, earning side money by betting on college sports. Once Benny gets recruited as a subcontractor to Troy, a local bookie, things slowly begin to spiral as drug dealers get into the picture, and eventually, the FBI gets involved. 

Eight Men Out

Hardcore baseball fans know all about the Black Sox Scandal, where eight Chicago White Sox members got accused of conspiring with gamblers to fix the 1919 World Series, where the Sox went down against the Cincinnati Reds. That was the 16th edition of the MLB World Series.

Written and directed by John Sayles, Eight Man Out does a fair job of running down, in a general way, what precisely happened during the 1919 MLB final. Much of the story here gets based on the book of the same name that came out in 1963, written by Eliot Asinof. It is interesting to note that a few of the people who participated in this project also went on to join Ken Burns’ Baseball miniseries that came out in 1994. From that group, Eight Men Out’s star John Cusack is the most notable member, as he provided voice-overs for Burns’ series.

Eight Men Out was not a commercial success, but it enjoys a cult following and a reputation as a well-made film, an accurate dive into one of US sports history’s biggest scandals.

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