Big Shot: Confessions of a Campus Bookie

Based on a true story, Big Shot: Confessions of a Campus Bookie follows Arizona State student Benny Silman (David Krumholtz) as he starts earning thousands of dollars a week by working as a bookie’s assistant – with trouble ensuing as Benny, who has long-since gone into business for himself, becomes embroiled in a progressively high-profile point-shaving scheme. The almost excessive familiarity of the movie’s storyline is initially not as problematic as one might’ve expected, with Ernest R. Dickerson’s dynamic directorial choices and Krumholtz’s personable work proving effective at capturing the viewer’s interest at the outset – even if, in terms of the latter, Krumholtz does occasionally go just a little overboard with the New Yorker stuff (ie the accent, the swagger, etc). It’s also worth noting that Benny’s budding relationship with a fellow student (Jennifer Morrison’s Callie) provides the film with appreciated breaks from the gambling-centric narrative, although even this facet of the proceedings ultimately resorts to hoary cliches and hackneyed developments (ie their expected breakup is triggered by his almost instantaneous transformation into a sleazebag). Big Shot: Confessions of a Campus Bookie‘s watchable yet far-from-enthralling atmosphere persists right up until the movie enters its egregiously conventional third act, with the predictable trajectory of Benny’s storyline virtually negating the strength of everything that precedes it (and this is to say nothing of the film’s bizarre, after-school-special-like coda, in which the real Benny Silman laments his illicit activities directly into the camera).

** out of ****