College student Richie Furst (Justin Timberlake) survives by using poker winnings to pay his tuition, but when he goes bust on an online gaming site, he's determined to make a name for himself by exposing the fraud. Unfortunately for "Runner Runner" they didn't spend much time with the smart, capable and struggling-to-get by Richie, who could be an intriguing form of the "every-man". He gets turned into a money-grubbing success story way too quickly.
Richie arrives in Costa Block, meets with entrepreneur Ivan Block (Ben Affleck) who decides he'll use Richie's smarts and drive as a way to further their income and superficiality. Just like the characters said, the movie is like everything you thought you wanted when you were 13 years old.
Girls in sexy dresses, check. An exotic resort where you could do whatever you wanted, check. Play in a casino all day long, check. Make tons and tons of money, check. And just keep flashing money and lights and sex until everybody realizes that you don't actually have a story.
Then, once everybody is bored of the over-hyped superficiality, give them a twisted plot with criminal mob bosses and fraudulent financial schemes. I was expecting the criminal mob bosses because it is a Hollywood crime thriller after all, but luckily the implications of what Richie and Ivan are up to can keep the film somewhat interesting to the end. But they didn't have anything else to drive the rest of the film. A life of nothing meaningful means a film of nothing meaningful.
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