Brandon Lang (Matthew McConaughey) wins a college bowl game for his team on the last play of the game, but unfortunately his leg doesn't quite make it, getting twisted at an odd angle while his body goes the other way.
Six years later, he is working a 900 line in Las Vegas when he's asked to work on the gambling line, and suddenly he's noticed by a high-rolling New York personality (Al Pacino) with his own cable show and whisked off to the big time.
Though he has his own operation including this weekly cable show, Pacino's character somewhat inexplicably needs to hang his hat on the potential offered by Lang, but he has to remake him from the somewhat hick-like personality into a slick salesman that will fit into the mold he requires.
Naturally everyone else in the operation, notably Jeremy Piven, takes offense at the golden boy coming in suddenly and taking over, but since he's winning, all is forgiven. Until he stops winning.
Once that happens, Brandon's world collapses all at once, including one of the high-rollers confronting him in a bizarre scene in the park that goes absolutely nowhere, and the movie just falls apart too. Or maybe that was supposed to mean something.
Of course it all works out in the end, but not in any way that you would expect - it just sort of ends. Perhaps that is the meaning that is supposed to be conveyed, but just about any choice would have been better than the one that it went with here, as it just ended badly.
Rated R for pervasive language, a scene of sexuality and a violent act.
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