"For $10,000 they break your arms. For $20,000 they break your legs. Axel Freed owes $44,000."

1974

1h 51m

6.7(116 votes)

Drama

Crime

Overview

New York City English professor Axel Freed outwardly seems like an upstanding citizen. But privately Freed is in the clutches of a severe gambling addiction that threatens to destroy him.

Where to Watch

Rent

Links & Resources

IMDbView

Social & External

IMDb

Production Companies

Videos & Trailers

2 videos

Cast & Crew

45 members

Acting

James Caan

Axel

Acting

Paul Sorvino

Hips

Acting

Lauren Hutton

Billie

Acting

Morris Carnovsky

A. R. Lowenthal

Acting

Jacqueline Brookes

Naomi

Acting

Burt Young

Carmine

Acting

Carmine Caridi

Jimmy

Acting

Carl W. Crudup

Spencer

Acting

Stuart Margolin

Cowboy

Acting

Vic Tayback

One

Acting

Antonio Fargas

Pimp

Acting

William Andrews

Basketball Coach

Acting

Steven Keats

Howie

Acting

Starletta DuPois

Monique

Acting

James Woods

Bank Officer

Acting

London Lee

Monkey

No Image

Acting

M. Emmet Walsh

Las Vegas Gambler

Acting

Allan Rich

Bernie

Acting

Ric Mancini

Sal

No Image

Acting

Joel Wolfe

Moe

No Image

Acting

Raymond Serra

Benny

Acting

Joseph Attles

Singer in Park

No Image

Acting

Ernest Butler

Vernon

No Image

Acting

Sully Boyar

Uncle Hy

Acting

Gregory Rozakis

Joe

No Image

Acting

Lucille Patton

Ricky's Wife

Acting

Ed Kovens

Ricky

No Image

Acting

Baron Wilson

Basketball Janitor

No Image

Acting

Richard Foronjy

Donny

Acting

Frank Sivero

Donny's Driver

Acting

Frank Adonis

Man in Park with Donny

Acting

Philip Sterling

Sidney

Production

Patricia Fay

Bank Teller

No Image

Acting

Beatrice Winde

Hospital Receptionist

Acting

Leon Pinkney

Street Basketball Boy

Acting

Alisha Fontaine

Howie's Girl

No Image

Acting

Presley Caton

Monkey's Girl

No Image

Acting

Mitch Stein

College Announcer

No Image

Acting

Jonathan Koshner

College Announcer

No Image

Acting

Charles Polk

Harlem Bartender

No Image

Acting

Dick Schaap

Television Announcer

No Image

Acting

Chick Hearn

Radio Announcer

Acting

Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs

Street Basketball Boy (uncredited)

Acting

Jerry Leon

Harlem Bar Patron (uncredited)

Directing

Melanie Mayron

Student (uncredited)

Similar Movies

2010

Ocean's Tortola

An organization by the name of Artimus Global goes after a police commissioner who is hunting them down.

Movie

1936

Don't Gamble with Love

Standard tale of husband and wife living a party lifestyle. He works in a gambling hall and she occasionally models and sings. Because they want to start a family wife feels the need to change their situation. Situation is changed and husband gets a new job and then a promotion but is tricked into a bad business deal and wants to go back to his old life.

Movie

7.5

1955

East of Eden

In the Salinas Valley in and around World War I, Cal Trask feels he must compete against overwhelming odds with his brother for the love of their father. Cal is frustrated at every turn, from his reaction to the war, how to get ahead in business and in life, and how to relate to his estranged mother.

Movie

8.1

1959

Some Like It Hot

Two musicians witness a mob hit and struggle to find a way out of the city. Their only opportunity comes in the form of joining an all-girl band as they prepare to leave on a tour. The two disguise themselves as women and struggle to keep their identities secret as they deal with the problems this brings.

Movie

6.3

1950

711 Ocean Drive

A telephone repairman in Los Angeles uses his knowledge of electronics to help a bookie set up a betting operation. After the bookie is murdered, the greedy technician takes over his business. He ruthlessly climbs his way to the top of the local crime syndicate, but then gangsters from a big East Coast mob show up wanting a piece of his action.

Movie

8.1

1957

Wild Strawberries

Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his pregnant and unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.

Movie

1989

Sadouh

The events take place in a fantasy framework around a disassembled family whose members only care about money, a creature from the planet Mercury comes to it that meets the requests of each individual for the family individually on the condition that he is repaired and his family is circled to become an ideal family to follow.

Movie

8.0

2016

Libero

Docu-fiction that tells the story of Libero Grassi, the months in which he broke the silence, the silence in which he found himself isolated, until he became an easy target for a mafia clan.

Movie

5.1

2006

Friends with Money

As she reaches her mid-thirties and quits her lucrative job, singleton Olivia finds herself unsure about her future and her relationships with her successful and wealthy friends. She begins to envy the security of her richer friends and, although their lives may seem easier, Olivia's friends have their problems too: screenwriters Christine and Patrick are unable to collaborate on their latest project, Jane and Aaron have lost the romance in their relationship, and Franny and Matt have difficulties handling the demands of parenthood.

Movie

7.5

1973

Serpico

New York cop Frank Serpico blows the whistle on the rampant corruption in the force only to have his comrades turn against him.

Movie

6.2

1998

Snake Eyes

All bets are off when shady homicide cop Rick Santoro witnesses a murder during a boxing match. It's up to him and lifelong friend, Naval intelligence agent Kevin Dunne, to uncover the conspiracy behind the killing. At every turn, Santoro makes increasingly shocking discoveries that even he can't turn a blind eye to.

Movie

1918

The Story of Dida Ibsen

Dida Ibsen, daughter of impoverished farmers, has, according to her father's will, to marry the main creditor. But she refuses and decides to live with a married man as a mistress, till he gets his divorce. In the town she opens a restaurant with the money of her wealthy lover, from whom she soon gets pregnant, but their dreams of marriage fail, his wife refuses the divorce. After a while, she decides to marry one of the regular guests at her restaurant, van Galen, who spent quite some time in the tropics and because of this is at the brink of madness. Shortly after the marriage his condition worsens and life becomes hell for Dida.

Movie

5.8

2001

Killing Mad Dogs

Golrokh, an Iranian author, struggles to settle her husband's debts caused by a business partner who left him to bear the consequences.

Movie

6.9

1932

Night World

"Happy" MacDonald and his unfaithful wife own a Prohibition era night club. On this eventful night, he is threatened by bootleggers, and the club's star dancer falls in love with a young socialite who drinks to forget a personal tragedy, among other incidents.

Movie

6.5

2014

The Salvation

In 1870s America, a peaceful American settler kills his family's murderer which unleashes the fury of a notorious gang leader. His cowardly fellow townspeople then betray him, forcing him to hunt down the outlaws alone.

Movie

6.2

1995

Just Cause

A Harvard professor is lured back into the courtroom after twenty-five years to take the case of a young black man condemned to death for the horrific murder of a child.

Movie

8.5

2000

Death of a Salesman

Willy Loman is an over-the-hill salesman who faces a personal turning point when he loses his job and attempts to make peace with his family: Willy's long-suffering wife Linda, and Biff and Happy, his troubled sons and his life.

Movie

5.3

2008

Deal

As an ex-gambler teaches a hot-shot college kid some things about playing cards, he finds himself pulled into the world series of poker, where his protégé is his toughest competition.

Movie

5.8

1990

Nuns on the Run

Brian and Charlie work for a gangster. When the boss learns they want to "leave" he sets them up to be killed, after they help rob the local Triads of their drug dealing profits. Brian and Charlie decides to steal the money for themselves, but when their escape doesn't go to plan, they have to seek refuge in a Nuns' teacher training school.

Movie

6.6

2004

Kinsey

Kinsey is a portrait of researcher Alfred Kinsey, driven to uncover the most private secrets of a nation. What begins for Kinsey as a scientific endeavor soon takes on an intensely personal relevance, ultimately becoming an unexpected journey into the mystery of human behavior.

Movie

Recommended Movies

7.1

1951

Quo Vadis

After fierce Roman commander Marcus Vinicius becomes infatuated with beautiful Christian hostage Lygia, he begins to question the tyrannical leadership of the despotic emperor Nero.

Movie

7.5

1961

The End of Summer

The family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress from his youth.

Movie

6.1

1976

Lifeguard

Rick is a Los Angeles County lifeguard who is in his thirties. At his 15-year high school reunion, he sees his old girlfriend who is now a divorced mother. After falling in love with her, Rick considers changing his career and lifestyle.

Movie

5.5

1971

Someone Behind the Door

A neurosurgeon with a cheating wife takes an amnesiac into his home and conditions him to believe that the cheating wife is his own and to take the "appropriate" action.

Movie

6.4

1978

Fingers

A wanna-be concert pianist spends his days making a living by collecting debts for his Mafioso father, a lifestyle that could eventually ruin his dreams of a musical career.

Movie

4.0

1990

Genuine Risk

An unlucky horseplayer (Peter Berg) turns collector for a mobster (Terence Stamp) and winds up on the run after bungling a job.

Movie

6.0

1978

Mañas y patrañas de gente extraña

Anti-communism animated short film released after Argentina's last military coup in 1976.

Movie

8.0

2016

Lion

A five-year-old Indian boy gets lost on the streets of Calcutta, thousands of kilometers from home. He survives many challenges before being adopted by a couple in Australia; 25 years later, he sets out to find his lost family.

Movie

7.9

2013

12 Years a Slave

In the pre-Civil War United States, Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery. Facing cruelty as well as unexpected kindnesses Solomon struggles not only to stay alive, but to retain his dignity. In the twelfth year of his unforgettable odyssey, Solomon’s chance meeting with a Canadian abolitionist will forever alter his life.

Movie

7.9

1997

Titanic

101-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater tells the story of her life aboard the Titanic, 84 years later. A young Rose boards the ship with her mother and fiancé. Meanwhile, Jack Dawson and Fabrizio De Rossi win third-class tickets aboard the ship. Rose tells the whole story from Titanic's departure through to its death—on its first and last voyage—on April 15, 1912.

Movie

5.8

2020

Mama Weed

A translator working for the police gets involved in the other side of drug dealing.

Movie

7.9

1962

The Exterminating Angel

A formal dinner party starts out normally enough, but after the bourgeois group retire to the host’s music room, they inexplicably find themselves unable to leave.

Movie

5.8

1987

A Prayer for the Dying

Martin, an I.R.A. hitman, is seen by a Catholic priest while carrying out a hit. He grows a bond with the priest and his niece. But his past and his former employers put all their lives in danger.

Movie

7.6

1966

Au Hasard Balthazar

The story of a donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding. Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie, is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of humankind. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly.

Movie

7.0

2019

Us

Husband and wife Gabe and Adelaide Wilson take their kids to their beach house expecting to unplug and unwind with friends. But as night descends, their serenity turns to tension and chaos when some shocking visitors arrive uninvited.

Movie

7.5

2023

Anatomy of a Fall

A woman is suspected of her husband's murder, and their blind son faces a moral dilemma as the sole witness.

Movie

8.2

2022

Top Gun: Maverick

After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell finds himself training a detachment of TOP GUN graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen.

Movie

8.2

1964

Woman in the Dunes

A vacationing entomologist suffers extreme physical and psychological trauma after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village and made to live with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.

Movie

6.2

1985

Death Wish 3

Architect/vigilante Paul Kersey arrives back in New York City and is forcibly recruited by a crooked police chief to fight street crime caused by a large gang terrorizing the neighborhoods.

Movie

7.3

1979

Nosferatu the Vampyre

A real estate agent leaves behind his beautiful wife to go to Transylvania to visit the mysterious Count Dracula and formalize the purchase of a property in Wismar.

Movie