Owning Mahowny

Philip Seymour Hoffman adds another winner to his string of stunning performances in this deliberately paced, almost clinical study of obsession by Richard Kwietniowski (Love and Death on Long Island). In a story based on an actual 1982 case, Hoffman plays a mid-level Toronto banker who's also a compulsive gambler. To support his habit, he devises an elaborate scheme to siphon funds from the accounts he oversees, using the proceeds to finance extended trips to an Atlantic City casino. There, a serpentine manager (John Hurt) quickly sizes him up as a potential cash cow and offers the timid fellow celebrity treatment. Owning Mahowny makes no effort to explain the psychological causes of Mahowny's addiction; it merely offers a cool, detached portrait of a man trapped in self-destructive behavior, and of the curiously codependent relationship that develops between him and the person who becomes his enabler. Although chilly and reserved, the picture is a beautifully controlled exercise in filmmaking, as far removed from standard docudrama as one could imagine; and, thanks to the extraordinary work of Hoffman and Hurt, it manages to touch an emotional nerve. Recommended. (F. Swietek)