OWNING MAHOWNY

 A comedy of mad passion, Owning Mahowny has a rigorous, 

crisp precision…"   

- J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

"There have been many good movies about gambling, but never one that so single-mindedly shows the gambler at his task. Philip Seymour Hoffman, that fearless poet of implosion, plays the role with a fierce integrity. His performance is a masterpiece of discipline and precision."   

- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times

 "Engrossing, wryly funny and strangely poetic."   

- Glenn Kenny, Premiere 

 "…quiet and moody, atmospheric and never flashy, and yet capable of 

moments of unbearable tension and an almost overpowering 

sense of paranoia.."  

 - Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall

"This tense, well-crafted film tells the true story of a Toronto banker -- played by the wonderful Philip Seymour Hoffman -- who embezzles $10 million to support his gambling habit. We always feel sympathy for Mahowny, as well as some exhilaration that he gets away with his schemes for as 

long as he does."  

 - Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com

"The film turns up the tension so incrementally, we don't realize the scope of Mahowny's moral wreck until it is too late"   

- Robert K. Elder, Chicago Tribune

"Quite simply, Owning Mahowny is one of the best films ever made about the subject of addiction and turned out to be a revelatory performance in the career of Philip Seymour Hoffman."   

- The Back Row

"Richard Kwietniowski's terrific Owning Mahowny, is unusual in its artful dodging of just about every Hollywood cliché about the perils and wicked pleasures of the gaming life… Owning Mahowny struck me as a peculiarly Scandinavian film. For most of a century, great northern directors--one thinks of Victor Sjostrom ( The Wind) and Carl Theodor Dreyer ( Vampyr), Ingmar Bergman and, more recently, Erik Skjoldbjaerg (Insomnia)

--have created unforgettable portraits of men and women 

self-condemned by illusion. "   

- John Bentley Mays, The Globe and Mail

Owning Mahowny  is the Leaving Las Vegas of gambling addiction. This film's strength is that it focuses on the gambling as obsessively as he does. There's a vicarious thrill in watching Hoffman hunch over a table in a sordid Atlantic City casino, eyes fixed on the cards, huffing and wheezing as he loses millions of misappropriated dollars. NNNN "  

- Wendy Banks, Now Magazine