When To Risk It All Or Lose It All?

Ever been confronted with challenging situations when life seemed at its hardest? It’s as if the forces of destiny all of a sudden decided to conspire against you and conceive a diabolical plot that will suit your life and your particular situation to a T.

Ever felt that way? I know I have. I have friends who have testified to feeling and experiencing the same thing, too.

I remember Rocco, a mate of mine, going through a particularly tough time one year. Financially he was really struggling. He was sort of between jobs, well actually he was busy studying, part-time. In-between, he used to work half days at an auto-electrician’s workshop, four days of the week and in the evening he delivered pizzas; with his scooter. Rocco didn’t have a car.  

As it turns out, between working at the auto-shop and delivering pizzas, Rocco got to know, let’s just say, some unsavoury characters and before you know it he was making deliveries to people who wanted more than just your regular pepperoni-pizza.

By that, I mean any recreational substance conceivable to your mind (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, watch Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, you’ll have an idea).

From being a simple pizza delivery guy, all of a sudden, he was an enormously prolific conveyor of stimulants. He had his clientele, he had his connections, he had the merchandise and he had his scooter, which by the way, was the perfect vehicle for running his own narcotics courier service. Everything just seemed to click, enabling him to make the most of this ‘opportunity’ during his time of need. Until of course, Rocco was caught.

Suddenly, fate took a turn for the worse. He was lucky to end up receiving only a suspended jail sentence (some of his connections were good for more than just purchasing illegal substances), but the whole ordeal did exactly what it had to – it gave him a proper wake-up call. Rocco retired from the dope-pedalling business and upped the focus on his part-time studies substantially.

When I asked him one day what in the world he was thinking, he told me, ‘I was thinking there’s no way I’m ever going to be able to pay for my studies and support myself with what I was earning from pizzas. The money I made for delivering drugs to these people was easy, it was cash-in-hand – lots of it, too and I was too desperate to care.’  

I have to admit, I’ve never been THAT desperate, but Richie Furst has.

In ‘Runner Runner’, Justin Timberlake plays his character. Richie is a guy who had to leave his life as a stockbroker on Wall Street behind after the company he worked for went down as a result of the stock market crash.

With few options left, he’s forced to resume his graduate studies at Princeton and finish his masters degree in finance. Unfortunately, due to his previous high-paying career, the board at Princeton refuses him any financial assistance and he has to make a plan.

Richie starts a small enterprise on the side where he introduces fellow students to online gambling and then takes a percentage for each new player he brings to the table.

Everything is going perfect until one of the students maxes out his father’s credit card limit during a poker match and word gets round to the Dean at Princeton of Richie’s virtual casino business.

Try as he might, the Dean won’t hear him out when he tries to explain that what he is doing is nothing more than marketing for these gambling sites and that he has no alternative way of financing his degree. He is told in no uncertain terms that either he stops what he is busy doing or ‘You won’t have a degree to finance here anymore’.

Being a phenomenal poker player himself, in a final bid to make as much money as possible, he decides to gamble all his savings, but ends up losing it. When he suspects foul play by the owners of the gambling site he played on, he decides to fly down to Costa Rica to go and confront the owner. 

But getting close to Ivan Block (Ben Affleck) doesn’t just happen.  He’s too much of a mogul. Coming up against a man who has a made a living out of satisfying people’s senses also catches Richie off-guard and it doesn’t take much convincing from Ivan to lure him over into his fast paced world of money, women and power.

Soon, the FBI is involved and yet again Richie is forced to gamble everything he has or risk losing it all.

Justin Timberlake gives a believable performance to his character, so does Affleck. The story itself seems to be fast tracked at stages and makes the film lose credibility. It’s entertaining to watch nonetheless. 

From Father To Son

Desperation is the catalyst to many a foolish deed. Keeping your moral compass alive and well when your back’s against the wall can be difficult to do when you find yourself in such a hopeless situation.

It’s the emotional equivalent to being a wounded animal out in the wild, except now the predators of temptation seem to inherently know there’s an easy meal close-by.

When walking around ‘wounded’ from a despondent, heavy heart, you have to be careful. Lie low, hide, and stay especially away from reckless people and environments. In fact, go lock yourself away in a room if you have to, it doesn’t matter, but don’t be caught out in the open in your time of trying. The casualty rate far exceeds those of survivors during such a time. 

Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling) has a unique skill – there isn’t a stunt too daring for him to perform on his motorcycle. To many he is a hero, including to Romania (Eva Mendes), a girl he’s been dating. The two have an on-off relationship due to the nature of his work; Luke has to travel a lot all over the country to perform. Perhaps the reason Romania has a secret: She had Luke’s baby boy.

When Luke finds out about his boy, he decides to turn a leaf and quit his job as a stunt-performer. Having missed out on a relationship with his own father, Luke is determined to now have one with his son. Unfortunately, simply walking back into the lives of Romania and their baby is not that simple. She is now living with someone else, a man that can offer both of them more stability.

 Trying to make a new living is hard for Luke and along with the man he now works for they decide to start robbing some banks. 

When you have a gift, knowing when and where to use it is almost more important than using it at all. Luke’s gift to ride motorcycles undoubtedly places him in a special category but unfortunately, people who live on the edge also don’t mind falling off the edge.

The last bank he robs turns out to be his last when he has a fatal encounter with the police, an event which in turn sets off a whole list of repercussions, for the police officer who shot him and also years later for his son. 

‘The Place Beyond The Pines’ takes a raw look at of the vicious cycle that keeps on repeating itself when a parent leaves a legacy of absence in a child’s life. It also explores the ‘code of silence’ that exist among men, a very real and powerful dynamic that stems from a misplaced ideology concerning loyalty to one’s friends or the group in order to be ‘one of the boys’.

The performance from all the cast members involved in this project is superb and as viewer, you come to understand the importance of building a solid relationship with your children from a young age. 

Behind Every Dark Cloud

 

There’s a problem with happiness – you can’t have it all the time. The message out there in the world however seems to be the exact opposite.

As a society, we chase any and every opportunity that will grant us a marvelous feeling of peace and contentment and when we don’t find it, we are unhappy. We seem to forget that loneliness, failure, despair and anguish is the other, often more true, flipside to the coin.

What we try to do, is to numb our pain. In fact, if we don’t have to deal with it, even better. Almost as if nothing in life should hurt. No. Pain is painful, loneliness suck, being rejected hurts and having your wife or husband cheat on you with a colleague can be emotionally crushing to most.

When you have to face life’s crises on top of being bi-polar too, things might seem even more severe, which in turn can make it even more, dare one say - interesting.

Patrick (Bradley Cooper) has just been released from a mental institution after being sentenced there by a court for assaulting the man who had a sexual affair with his wife. While spending time at the mental facility, for the first time he comes to terms with the fact that he suffers from bi-polar disorder.

Pat however, refuses to drink his medication because it makes him feel drowsy, but perhaps he just hasn’t had the right motivation to do so, yet. When he meets up again with Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a girl who herself seems to gravitate towards the extreme ends of socially acceptable behaviour, Pat finds someone with whom he can associate. 

The fact that Tiffany is in contact with Nikki, Pat’s ex-wife, is of course what really interests him (or so he says). Ever since his violent explosion and being sent for psychiatric counselling, Pat hasn’t seen her and all he can obsess about is getting back in touch with her.

Tiffany agrees to help get a letter to her from him, in return for dancing with her at an upcoming event. Although feeling forced into helping her, he soon realises that for all her unconventional quirks and mannerisms, everything she says or does is completely void of pretense something, that in his world, allows him to make more sense of things than he has been able to do for a very long time. 

  

‘Silver Linings Playbook’ is a wonderful story of two people making the most of dealing with some really challenging problems they have to face in life. It makes those of us who sometimes feel dejected and alienated realise that when you try hard enough and stay positive, you can have a silver lining to your story too.

Ultimately, we are all a bit messed up. Something this movie communicates really well. What you want and yearn for is often far simpler than you initially might have thought - to find someone that will love you and say, ‘It’s okay – I’ll be messed up with you.’