Owning Mahowny: Critic Reviews

Hoffman has cornered the market on playing timid, badly dressed, mouth-breathing sad sacks ... yet it's easy to forget that what gives his loser characters such singular life is their deep-down obsessional fervor.

Mr. Kwietniowski's mellow and diminutive story of obsession lacks the tall-tale perversity of his previous Love and Death on Long Island.

Made interesting by the performance of Philip Seymour Hoffman.

The filmmakers have taken a bet that an unsexy, unpretty and unconventional movie about bank robbery and gambling can be as captivating as its flashier mainstream counterparts, and they've won.

As channeled by the extraordinary Hoffman, Dan Mahowny is less a freak than a nerve-deadened Everyman with the courage to search for something that makes him feel alive.

For all the millions its antihero fritters away, the movie is dramatically miserly, with a scope too small for the emotions at stake.

The movie makes no effort to understand Mahowny's addiction. There is no clear sense of when, where or how the bug bit. He's simply obsessed and out of control.

This is a small story, as quiet and unassuming as its main character. And, like Mahowny, it makes few wrong moves and quite a few right ones.

Owning Mahowny confirms Philip Seymour Hoffman's reputation as one of the screen's consummate actors.

Collapses into a public service announcement on gambling.

Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance is a masterpiece of discipline and precision.

Hoffman rewards us with a subtle performance, never quite opening himself up.

Owning Mahowny is an unflashy but fascinating meditation on addiction and greed.

Hoffman's soft-spoken, ultra-low-key demeanor is a perfect fit for Mahowny.

The film doesn't really offer much behind its story.

Despite its intelligence, it's dreary and uninvolving, more an exercise in style than an act of love.

A showcase for [Hoffman].

Whether or not you think of gambling as a vice, you can bet on Owning Mahowny.

Works so well both as social satire and outlaw character study.

This is a case of an actor making the perfect choice for a character and following through to the letter, only to end up with exactly the effect he wanted.

A motion picture that never ceases to be worthwhile.

A searing story of addictive behavior.

The terrific concentration Hoffman brings to the part, his bi-play with Hurt, and the emerging presence of Driver as a woman whose love for a man remains undiminished go a long way to hold attention through a dauntingly elliptical plot.