Such an interesting movie. Caan plays an English professor with a gambling addiction. He's $44,000 in debt to the mob's loan sharks; so far, an ordinary movie. What separates it from run-of-the-mill movies are Caan's English lectures. The one on William Carlos Williams' "In the Grain" series of essays on history and literature through biography was fascinating. I immediately bought a copy for my Kindle. The lecture provides such a counter-point to the professor's own life: Washington was desperately afraid of losing and that caused him to abjure risk. Williams applies that observation to the American psyche: Americans fear change above all else. "Americans fear new experience more than they fear anything." (D.H. Lawrence. They are the world's greatest dodgers because "they dodge their own very selves."
Of course, the movie is all about risk and finally ends with a more prosaic ending.
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