When I saw this great ensemble cast I thought wow, it has to be decent; then a professional poker player recommended it. Okay I'll rent it. Wow. Very painful to watch. The biggest problem I could see is the writing; specifically the story lines are very weak and the dialogue between characters is absolutely awful. So many stereotypes and cliches. I did manage to make it through the entire movie but was very disappointed overall. Kelsey Grammar is in the movie for about four minutes total and his is by far the worst performance of the bunch. Ray Liotta is passable as is Whittaker. Bassinger and DeVito are very mediocre which led me to conclude that the director is as much to blame as the writer. I would not watch it again and would not recommend it.

a fascinating blend of characters that I enjoyed watching and trying to figure out. I highly recommend this movie to those that like a movie with teeth and depth.

this movie is so bad its embarrassing-- half the cast are capable of great work--- bassinger riotta Danny Devito and forest whitaker- but they are brought down -way down by the inability of the rest of the cast to do anything even remotely related to the craft of acting- not to mention a really really bad script and idiotic dialogue with lots of f words filling a void where real writing should be-- as for Jay Mohr Grant Sullivan Carla Gugino kelsey grammer-( his ridiculous fake nose and crutches reminds me of peter sellers who was hysterical doing this kind of thing-- but grammer wants us to take him seriously !!!!!! none of these people can act at all--- what they do onscreen is cloying and difficult to watch and the always over acting & over rated inompetent phony actor who cant even eat convincingly on camera , tim roth-- his ridiculous incompetence puts the nail in the coffin of this dead on arrival waste of time and money--- literally nothing to see here---avoid it !!!! and maybe mark rydell should have retired right after on golden pond-- a masterpiece esp compared to this drivel-- whoever cast it should be in another business just for the toxic group of supporting people here-- how could the others with real talent have been attracted to this in the first place-- dont these people realize when they do bad stuff like this- sure they can buy another home maybe-- but it degrades their career---their images---- contributes to the cultural wasteland- and is realy annoying when we pay to rent or heaven forbid buy junk like this----dont they care-- or is it just another day at the proverbail office for them---who knows---i wanted to see this so i could just watch bassinger actually --her career is a vanishing act---but kim !!!! make better choices !!!!!!!! shame on devito( see him really act in the under rated living out loud--)ray liotta and forest for climbing on board this disaster---i guesss they couldnt resist wanting to work we each other -- too bad it turned out to be such a disastrous stinker !!!!

Easily in the running for worst film of the year. Not the best cast in the world can save this schoolmasterly predictable hundredth edition of the same old lame addiction and emotional abuse story collection.
What were they thinking, the Whitakers, Basingers, de Vitos, Liottas, Roths...? Probably nothing. Best that can happen for them is if nobody notices this piece of incompetence.

The acting is strong here. Danny Devito is quite a captivating actor. Even Money is worth the price of a rental because you'll get your money's worth. Still, it seems like a B movie since it has no real blockbuster stars unless you think Kim and Ray are prime box office. Good script however and good moments of real drama. Here is a story of lost souls with gambling problems.

This movie despite a cast consisting of Forest Whitaker, Ray Liotta, Kim Basinger, Kelsey (Fraiser) Grammar, Jay Mohr and Tim Roth, starts off at a crawl and never makes it to the finish line. While it gives an amateurish attempt to connect multiple intertwining stories, the sad fact is that none of the stories are interesting enough, nor defined enough, to make it worth the viewers time, to buy into any emotional involvement. The acting is weak at best, and the fictional characters are ridiculous, especially Ray Liotta's meek, spineless, "house-husband", who has to be the dumbest person on earth, constantly believing that his wife, Kim Basinger, was always at the coffee shop throughout the day and till all hours of the night. Their 13 year old daughter's makeup and clothes made her look like a hooker and neither parent ever said a word. But since Kim's hair looked like road kill and she wore glasses that bring to mind a wacky science teacher from 1954, she probably had no right to say anything since she probably never even looked in the mirror. The two basketball games presented are probably the only two games in history that had only "ONE" missed shot. The supposed underbelly of this terrible movie was gambling addiction, and it did no justice to either the problem or the cure. I would not recommend buying or renting this. It might be worth watching for free on cable after midnight on a three day weekend.

I rented this movie because I do a weekly review for a local newspaper. I thought with so many different good actors in one movie, at the very least it would be a fair movie. At the least, right? I was wrong as this rehashed garbage featured a boring storyline, terrible acting, and is nothing more than a rather poor excuse at making "an independent film". Stay away by all means.

EVEN MONEY has somewhat the same manner of storytelling that made CRASH so impressive: many apparently disparate characters and stories, all related by the disease of gambling addiction, work in parallel time frames to a related conclusion. Director Mark Rydell (The Rose, On Golden Pond, Cinderella Liberty, The Reivers, The Fox, Intersections etc) has a firm hold on his material - a screenplay by newcomer Robert Tanner - and steers his large and very fine cast through a rapid sequence study of character types. For this viewer it works well.

Carol Carver (Kim Basinger) is a blocked novelist married to Professor Tom (Ray Liotta) who happens to spend her hours away from home and her duties as a wife and mother to teenage daughter Nicole (Carson Brown) at the local casino, gambling away her family's savings on the slot machines. She meets a down and out magician Walter (Danny DeVito) who convinces her to join him in a resurrection of his life as a famous artist. Carol's gambling addiction fractures her life. At the same time plumber Clyde Snow (Forest Whitaker), who worships his younger brother Godfrey Snow (Nick Cannon) for his prowess as an emerging basketball hero, and to escape his dangerous debt from gambling talks his brother into 'fixing' games to help him win back his losses and pay the collectors. The third gambling addict is Augie (Jay Mohr) who with his companion Murph (Grant Sullivan) runs a betting numbers game, a profitable business until Murph's infatuation with his girlfriend Veronica (Carla Gugino) consumes his attention. The tie-in factors among these people are the man behind the collections, a smarmy Victor (Tim Roth) who emerges at all the wrong times to distort their lives and hopes as looks out for his boss Ivan (Mark Rydell), and a strange crippled detective Brunner (Kelsey Grammer), and the ending of the film is tied together in a series of twists that surprise everyone.

Non-linear storytelling is not new, but in Rydell's handling of Tanner's script (and with a lot of help from some very fine actors!) it takes on a new dimension: the messages are not pretty but the souls and crushed dreams of the characters weld our attention. It is a film well worth watching. Grady Harp, September 07

Not just about gambling addiction, but the human weakness and addiction to greed. An incredible ensemble cast with mature interconnected plot lines that deal with love, sacrifice, forgiveness, despair, and happiness. Give this one try. I think you'll be superised.