A couple of apparent losers get acquainted during a poker game in some godforsaken Iowa town. One, Gerry (a terrific Ben Mendelsohn), is a fascinating degenerate gambler who probably couldn’t stop if someone told him the world would end tomorrow if he didn’t. The other player, Curtis (an equally good Ryan Reynolds), is like-able although swaggering and outgoing to the point of badgering. He is also hard to figure out. Curtis gambles, too, although more on the people in his life, strangers included, than on actual games.
Pleasantly Plot-light and atmosphere-heavy through most of its 108 minutes, Mississippi Grind turns the tables and indulges in a flurry of dramatic twists in its final quarter. Most of them work but chiefly as exclamation points on an unnerving, intimate character study. As Curtis is quick to point out during the twosome’s road jaunt through St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans, it is the journey that counts not the destination.
The Australian Mendelsohn (Netflix’s Bloodline) gives one of the finest performances of the year. It’s hard to reimagine this movie without him. Gerry’s hubris, in poker terms, is raised by his sensitivity. One minute fearless, the next foundering with fear, Gerry may incidentally recall other characters in gambling movies like California Split and The Gambler, but, in essence, he’s a whole new ball of wax. His nervous energy, his fatalistic elan, compress into a single facial expression of a walking time bomb. We think he’s bound to lose it all; we don’t know exactly how and when.
Curtis seems like an even edgier character. As he bears the brunt of Gerry’s predictable actions, it’s difficult to gauge what is under that ultra-calm exterior. It can’t be good, can it? Tonally, in Of Mice and Men terms, he’s practically George to Gerry’s Lenny. He not only takes him under his wing; he steps aside long enough to let Gerry reach the edge of self-destruction before he reels him in.
Once Curtis’s unique Achille’s heel is revealed, he gains a newfound complexity. Gerry, although he may not seem to have veered off the same broken behavior patterns, gains immensely from Curtis’s seemingly casual gifts. As the giver in this intriguing tale, Curtis –his motives and fate–requires the fuller contemplation. Hold onto your hat for a righteous blues soundtrack to wash down this gritty film full of card games, casinos, racetracks, friendly hookers, estranged families, and, underneath it all, a messy, compelling desperation.