British director Stephen Frears continues to display an impeccable sense of character and setting in the Las Vegas gambling dramedy “Lay the Favorite.”
Rebecca Hall plays a one-time stripper with a Marilyn Monroe voice but a physicist’s sense for numbers. She drifts into the pro gambling operation run by Dink (an equally amusing Bruce Willis), an avuncular sports nut with a jealous wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones). But as Hall’s Beth develops a crush on the old man, she is forced out of the gambling firm and winds up with an illegal bookmaking operation run out of New York by a slippery Damon Runyon figure (Vince Vaughn).
Frears has a lot of fun with the bad tempers and high spirits of this crew of adrenaline junkies, and though the story falls a little flat, the script is sprinkled with dry wit. When someone tells Beth it’s surprising that her new boyfriend (Joshua Jackson) is “such a normal guy,” she replies, “I know, he’s my first.”