TWO FOR THE MONEY

Directed by DJ Caruso. Starring Al Pacino, Matthew McConaughey, Rene Russo, Armand Assante, Jeremy Piven

15A cert, gen release, 122 min

IS SOMEBODY playing a joke on the Texan somnambulist who bears the name Matthew McConaughey? Towards the beginning of this ponderous drama, a study of aspects of American sports betting that is guaranteed to travel badly, Matthew's character is employed to record the messages punters hear when they phone up automated tipsters. For some years we critics have been searching for a way of accurately describing the monotonously sedative noise that emerges from McConaughey's mouth. Why, of course. He sounds like a recorded message. He is an ambulatory 1800 number.

If only the director had given Bad Al Pacino - the shouty complement to the now rarely seen Good Al - a bell and a tricorn hat and had urged him to bellow "Oyez, oyez!". Then both actors would be represented in their ideal jobs.

The two comically dreadful performances aside, there is little else in this sluggish, predictable morality play to interest domestic viewers. Somewhat reminiscent of the considerably more vulgar, considerably more entertaining The Devil's Advocate, in which Bad Al played a demonic lawyer, Two for the Money, based on some sort of true story, casts the diminutive Klaxon as the charismatic owner of a firm that offers advice to American football gamblers.

It comes to Pacino's attention that McConaughey, then employed by a less prestigious company in a similar line, has a gift for picking winners. The former quarterback is lured to Manhattan, where, in true Faustean style, he is soon buying ugly sports cars and putting his aged mother's phone calls on hold.

Will he see the error of his ways and gain a kind of redemption? I'll give you 11/10 on eventual salvation - and if any one else offers better then I advise you to take it.

Donald Clarke