Sports gambling impresario Walter Abrams, played by Al Pacino, finds a cunning protege and future adversary in ex-football star Brandon Lang, played by Matthew McConaughey, in "Two For the Money." Click photo for larger image. "Two for the Money" Rating: R for pervasive language, sexuality, some violence. Starring: Al Pacino, Matthew McConaughey, Rene Russo. Director: D.J. Caruso. 'Two For the Money' Web site

For many of America's 6 million gambling addicts, Monday night football is your last chance to pay off your bookie Tuesday morning from your losses Sunday afternoon. If you're the professional "betting adviser" they paid for the wrong picks, the pressure is even greater to get it right next time -- or find somebody who can.

Such is the challenge for the televangelical talents of Walter Abrams (Al Pacino) and his protege-prognosticator Brandon (Matthew McConaughey) in "Two for the Money."

Charismatic Walter, a recovering addict closely watched by worldly wife Toni (Rene Russo), gave up gambling for the far more lucrative vocation of getting other people to gamble. His sports-prediction TV show is a thinly disguised betting service and a hard sell for his 900 phone business that promises callers even more sure-bet tips -- usually delivering on that, always delivering a bookie connection. But both the show and the business are in need of fresh blood.

That would be Brandon, a recovering college football player with a far more (potentially) lucrative ability to pick winners. Under Walter's tutelage, he hones his forecasting and his pitching, graduates from telephone to television and becomes "John Anthony," the telegenic sensation around whom Walter builds a new empire.

Two big imperial problems: (1) The emperor can be a bipolar maniac. (2) His football fortuneteller can't always be right.

Walter is a Pacino role in spades, trumped by its excesses. He's a chain-smoking heart-attack patient, full of sudden inexplicable rages. His paternal attitude toward Brandon is unpredictably threatening and jealous one minute, inexplicably tender and forgiving the next.

Rene Russo, right, stars in 'Two For the Money' along with Al Pacino and Matthew McConaughey. Click photo for larger image.

Their passionate father-son relationship is complicated by Brandon's forbidden attraction to Toni.

Pacino has fine moments, most notably a hilarious scene in which he crashes and terrorizes a Gamblers Anonymous meeting. But overall, his in-your-face pugnacity is unrestrained by director D.J. Caruso ("The Saltan Sea") and unaided by Dan Gilroy's frantic, unfocused script, whose glib ending fails to connect the disconnected dots of his personality switches.

McConaughey and Russo support him as best they can. But does "Two for the Money" achieve the powerful "character study" it's aiming for -- that trademark Pacino intensity of the "Godfathers," "Scarface," "Scent of a Woman," "Dick Tracy"? Does it succeed in making a statement about the morality of encouraging a gambling addiction?

Don't bet on it.