Entertainment

‘Lay the Favorite’ review

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.”