Come on ... you know you never count your money when you're sittin' at the table: "Owning Mahowny"

Part of me wanted to ignore this movie simply because of the title. Have you ever seen "Mahowny" spelled that way? Why not just the normal "Mahoney?" Then again, that's how Steve Guttenberg's character spelled his name in the "Police Academy" movies, and that's hardly a model for our children.

You may recall me mentioning this movie as a supposedly sterling performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman ("Twister"), coming a couple of years before his Oscar-calbier turn in "Capote." Here we have Hoffman portraying another real-life person: a mild-mannered bank officer whose gambling habit gets him in deep trouble. Even worse, he's Canadian.

It doesn't take long to learn about the double life of Dan Mahowny. First we see him as a shlub who nevertheless knows what he's doing when it comes to bank loans. Then we see him as a shlub who likes to place bets on the horses and games. And Hoffman has the shlub part down pat, from the nerdy glasses and wispy mustache to the rumpled suits and mussed hair. Sure, he may clean up for a client meeting, but for the most part he's just a lovable loser.

"Loser" is an understatement. For all of Mahowny's skill at banking, he's not so good at gambling. It doesn't help that he can't stop, either, leading him to start abusing his bank position to bankroll his extracurricular activities, which take him from Toronto to Atlantic City and even Las Vegas. As the stakes get higher, so does Mahowny's anxiety. Even the love of a good woman -- the mostly unrecognizable Minnie Driver ("GoldenEye") -- doesn't help.

Hoffman does a nice job as a man balancing two worlds, never playing Mahowny as hapless despite his appearance. It's also clear that Mahowny really is compulsive -- to the point that his every action is focused on allowing him to gamble, from the fraudulent bank loans to the passing up of various casino perks. With the latter, it starts with no booze on the casino floor and continues to dismissing the hooker in his AC hotel suite. When he does give in -- taking the casino jet to AC -- it's just because that means he can be at the tables sooner.

Of course, the party has to end sometime, and that's what kept me watching to the end even if the movie as a whole was a bit understated. For instance, we know that Mahowny is a good worker, but it's hard to tell he was a rising star (like the real person this movie is based on). I also started to lose track of exactly how much Mahowny lost. Maybe the low-key nature is because all these people were Canadian. On the plus side, they say "a-boot" a lot.