Starring Mark Wahlberg. Rated 14A

Although Marky Mark is no one’s idea of a tenured college professor, Mr. Wahlberg lays it all on the line for The Gambler, an intriguing, if not quite convincing, remake of Karel Reisz’s movie of 40 years ago, with screenwriter William Monahan drawing heavily on James Toback’s script for the original.

The new version, directed by Britain’s Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), is primarily concerned with the seedy, late-night environment of off-the-books betting that keeps draining whatever cash (and more) Wahlberg’s English-lit teacher can carry.

In the original, James Caan’s Axel Freed specializes in Dostoyevsky, whose existentially bleak writings obviously influenced the New York–set tale. Now things have moved to sunny L.A. and the Camus-quoting hero, called Jim Bennett, is a kind of ethnic blank, as opposed to the original’s Coppola-like milieu, which centred on mostly second-generation Italian- and Jewish-American characters (with Paul Sorvino and others) vying with young blacks for pieces of a shrinking pie, all against a background of Vietnam and Watergate.

Caan’s calculatedly carefree protagonist had something vaguely incestuous going on with his tough, wealthy mother, and here Wahlberg has been paired somewhat cryptically with Jessica Lange, who is starting to grow into the face she bought a few years back. In one of her best roles, Lauren Hutton played a free spirit able to call Axel on his bullshit, a role that has been downgraded to that of Bennett’s mildly impressed student (Brie Larson), who simply tags along on some of his self-destructive adventures.

Given those caveats, the update does make a stylish reach for the philosophical ambivalence and fragmented psychology that marked Toback’s writing. (His Fingers, recently remade as The Beat That My Heart Skipped, starred Harvey Keitel as a concert pianist who moonlights as a brutal loan collector.) Whether or not you buy Wahlberg’s doomed-samurai vibe, odds are you’ll love the sporadic turns by John Goodman and The Wire’s Michael Kenneth Williams as folks you should never borrow from. And the whole thing is well supported by Jon Brion and Theo Green’s atmospheric score. This Gambler doesn’t take enough risks but still offers decent rewards.