Owning Mahowny

Mild-mannered bank assistant manager Dan Mahowny has three lives: personal, public and secret. He denies he has a gambling problem. He refers to his cash-flow troubles as strictly a financial burden that he will rectify soon. His luck at stealing money from his bank to fund high-stakes ventures, however, becomes better than his luck at the gaming tables in Atlantic City and Las Vegas as his world of juggled books and staggering embezzlement threatens to devour him. This story of obsession not with money itself but rather with the next flip of a card or roll of the dice is based on the factual book Stung: The Incredible Obsession of Brian Molony, by Gary Stephen Ross. Philip Seymour Hoffman takes this low-key character study to intriguing heights as the self-destructive title character. The movie was directed by Richard Kwietniowski.