Win it all is not a typical haha comedy movie. It was released on Netflix in 2017 and was directed and cowritten by Joe Swanberg. The other writer was Jake Johnson, who is also the main character. Other prominent characters are Joe Lo Triglio, Keagan Michael and Aislinn Derbez.
This film is about a gambling addict Eddie Garret(Jake Johnson) who tries to navigate a world where his gambling habits have put him in debt. Once day, Joe is handed a bag by a local thug, Michael who instructs him not to look into the bag until he comes out of jail to collect it. The estimated jail time was 6 months. He promises Eddie that his reward for this would be $10,000 once he gets out. Eddie's only job was to hide the bag somewhere and never look into it. Simple right?
Of course Eddie could not resist the temptation and after a few days of going back and forth with himself, he looks into the bag and certainly regrets it because like every source of temptation, close proximity is a disaster . It is not the best thing to have a bag of ready-to-be-used-for-gambling-money in your house.
Eddie talks to his sponsor from the addiction recovery program i.e Gene acted by Keagan Michael, to tell him that he was planning on taking some money to gamble(just a little of course) to be able to pay off his debts. Of course, Gene does not believe it and advises him to forget the bag and just be patient. True to your prediction, if you're guessing along he takes $500 and gambles this away in a loss and that's how the downward spiral begins.
Basically, he has to go to Gene again, humbly this time and begins to attend the addiction recovery program as he should have done. He asks his brother Ron acted by Joe Lo Triglio to give him a handyman job and begins to gradually get his life back on track. He meets a girl named Eva(Aislinn Derberz) who inspires him to be a better man.
It was amusing to me when Michael, the thug who'd given him the bag earlier called to say he was getting out of jail earlier than the estimated 6 months, so he had to find a way to get all the money he'd spent, money which had now run into thousands of dollars. Even more so, when the place he made it back was in the suburbs at a high stake gambling game recommended by Gene who was supposed to be mentoring him against such things.
It was equally amusing to me to accept the idea that Eddie could really change because of a woman. I don't buy that. I don't believe Eva was enough to keep him going because I honestly did not see any seriousness in him. I guess that's part of what makes it entertaining and enough reason to classify it as comedy. I was surprised to see lots of good reviews on rotten tomatoes because I thought it was going to have more of the 'meh' type of reviews. But hey, it's nice to be surprised.
I'll share a little quote-comment that resonated with me though from a review:
I rate it a 7 out of 10 because of the reasons mentioned above. Let me know if you've watched this and what you thought about it as I'm always curious.
Cheers!
