Lay the Favorite
| Lay the Favorite | |
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| Directed by | Stephen Frears |
| Produced by | Randall Emmett George Furla Paul Trijbits |
| Screenplay by | D.V. DeVincentis |
| Based on | The memoir of the same name by Beth Raymer |
| Starring |
Bruce Willis Rebecca Hall Catherine Zeta-Jones Joshua Jackson |
| Cinematography | Michael McDonough |
| Edited by | Mick Audsley |
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Production
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| Distributed by |
Cheetah Vision Random House Films The Weinstein Company |
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Release date
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Running time
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94 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $20 million |
| Box office | $1,576,687 |
Lay the Favorite (promoted as Lay the Favourite in the UK) is a 2012 American comedy-drama film starring Bruce Willis, Rebecca Hall, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Joshua Jackson. Based on Beth Raymer's memoir of the same title, the film follows a young, free-spirited woman as she journeys through the legal and illegal world of sports gambling. The film was directed by Stephen Frears.
Beth is becoming bored with her life in Florida, doing stripteases and lap dances for private customers. Her dad, Jerry, tells her to follow her dream of moving to Las Vegas, where she seeks honest work as a cocktail waitress.
A young woman named Holly, who lives at the same Vegas motel, arranges for Beth to meet Dink Heimowitz, a professional gambler who follows the fast-changing odds on sporting events and employs assistants at Dink, Inc., to lay big-money bets for him. Beth is intrigued and it turns out she has a good mind for numbers, easily grasping Dink's system and becoming his protege. A young journalist, Jeremy, becomes attracted to Beth, but she's hooked on the excitement and income that gambling provides and is not ready to settle for any kind of normal life.
When she begins expressing a more personal interest in her much-older mentor, Dink's sharp-tongued wife, Tulip, lets it be known in no uncertain terms that she wants Beth out of her husband's life. Against his advice, Beth accepts a similar job for a rival gambler, a man called Rosie who runs an illegal operation based in Curaçao. She succeeds there at first, but both Rosie and the job turn out to be extremely dangerous, and several lives depend on the outcome of one last game of basketball.
Filming began in April 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Shooting also took place in New Orleans, and New York City. It was released January 21, 2012.
The film received negative reviews from critics. It holds a 19% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 47 reviews.
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