Authentic feel of a road-trip gambling binge in 'Mississippi Grind'

A strange current runs through Mississippi Grind, the story of two bottom-rung gamblers on a multistate binge.

It's something like affectionate nostalgia. The movie floats in a bubble of old blues music and lost country songs. The gamblers themselves (Ryan Reynolds, Ben Mendelsohn) literally float on riverboats, down the Mississippi from St. Louis to New Orleans, along the way playing sidetrack-betting parlors, eating at barbecue joints, drinking in dive bars.

The movie is a snapshot collage of flyover America, but also, perhaps, an homage to the soon-to-be-lost world of brick-and-mortar gambling.

One day soon (very soon, judging by the omnipresence of the commercials), it will be possible for a gambler to blow his kids' college fund on DraftKings.com without looking up from his laptop.

That will be a dark day for casinos, but especially for movies, which have linked gambling and glamour since James Bond played baccarat. There is nothing cinematic about a guy playing the state Lotto on his mobile phone.

In Grind, by contrast, we have Reynolds, collar up to ward off the chill of long odds, playing a hunch, making a mad bet on the flip of a card, while gorgeous Sienna Miller watches, transfixed.

Mississippi Grind has won widespread praise for its authentic, lived-in feel and is regarded as an improvement over the recent remake of The Gambler. But both trade in the dubious idea that flat-broke losers are attractive to women.

Miller, though, fades from the movie rather quickly, as Grind zeroes in on the offbeat friendship between Curtis (Reynolds) and Gerry (Mendelsohn), men who organize their lives around games of chance, but for different reasons.

Reynolds has a self-destructive streak that would find expression with or without gambling. Mendelsohn is a full-on addict who plays and loses compulsively.

What they share is a lifestyle that makes them toxic to those around them. Gerry, after walking out on his family, his employer, even his bookie (Alfre Woodard), states the obvious: "I'm not a good person."

Yet the two men soldier on, happily buffeted by fortune, reveling in the uncertainty in a way peculiar to gamblers, toward a conclusion that lifts Grind out of its carefully constructed atmosphere of realism - it ends more like a fable.

Maybe that's a cheat, but it doesn't feel entirely wrong, and it's hard to reproach filmmakers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck for treating Curtis and Gerry with a decency the men do not, or cannot, show to others.

StartText

Directed by Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden. With Ryan Reynolds, Ben Mendelsohn, Sienna Miller.

Distributed by A24 Films.

Running time: 108 minutes.

Parent's guide: R (language).

Playing at: The Roxy Theaters.EndText