Phillip Seymour Hoffman is without a doubt the best independent actor making movies today. I first fell for him when he played the Jaw Dropping low life shady character Allen in Happiness, and since then his career has only gotten brighter (or darker?). He personifies "creep", and in roles like the mattress man from Punch Drunk Love, I find myself wanting to reach through the screen and strangle him. Of course, he does it again in Owning Mahoney as Dan Mahoney a young assistant manager at a Toronto bank who uses other people's funds to repay debts and feed his gambling addiction. My dissatisfaction rises as he becomes more audacious and gambles away more and more of his misbegotten cash. You will find yourself yelling "QUIT NOW!!" at the screen, but his only reply will be "but i just got here". Dan Mahoney is possibly the simplest and most complex character I've seen Hoffman tackle. Is it the love of gambling that drives him to play $70,000 hands?? No, his facial expressions don't change from when he's up 9 million, to when he's gambled away his last $500 chip. His addiction has no purpose, it's almost as if he is doing this simply to survive. Hoffman wasn't the only gem in this picture, he was coupled with Minnie Driver who was almost unidentifiable with her dark rimmed glasses and bleached blonde hair (and not a bad Canadian accent eh?). It's too bad this film will probably only be seen by true independent film/Hoffman fans because it's intense and gripping. A slice of someone's life destroyed by addiction, this is a must see!
