The Music of Chance (film)

Jim Nashe worked as a fireman, but a large inheritance and a divorce from his wife has left him free to buy a new car and see the country at his leisure.

He picks up a hitchhiker, Jack Pozzi, who turns out to be a professional gambler. Pozzi tells how he just lost his net worth when the poker game he was playing at was robbed and he was beaten after the others suspected him of orchestrating the robbery. Now he cannot afford the minimum $10,000 buy-in to play a poker game with a pair of eccentric old millionaires whom he had previously beaten handily. With money and time to spare, the intrigued Nashe offers to back Pozzi with $10,000 for a rematch.

The wealthy men, Flower and Stone, live together on a huge estate. They willingly agree to another game, but are not the suckers Pozzi takes them for. After losing at first, they repeatedly win, exhausting the $10,000. Nashe puts up his car for more chips, though he has to agree to $5,000, much less than he says the car is worth. Pozzi loses again. Now Nashe, who needs the car to get home proposes a new bet: a single cut of the cards. If he wins, he gets the car back; if he loses, he owes $10,000. Nashe loses.

As Flower and Stone do not trust Pozzi and Nashe to repay the debt, the only option is for them to work it off. The quirky Flower and Stone have a pile of 10,000 large stones, said to be from a 15th-century castle. They would like to build a wall on their property, so they tell Nashe and Pozzi that if they devote the next 50 days to erecting the wall, their debt will be paid.

A foreman named Calvin Murks keeps an eye on the two men. Nashe methodically goes about his task, but Pozzi becomes increasingly unhinged, feeling like a slave. Pozzi takes offense at a snide remark by Murks and assaults him, whereupon Murks begins coming to work armed.

After learning that the cost of their food is being added to their debt and that Flower and Stone have gone on an overseas trip, Pozzi burrows under the fence to escape. However, the next morning, Nashe finds him, unconscious and badly beaten, outside their shack, and Murks takes him to hospital. Later, Murks says that Pozzi recovered and left, but Nashe believes that Murks assaulted him and that he is dead. Eventually, Nashe leaves.

• James Spader as Jack Pozzi
• Mandy Patinkin as Jim Nashe
• M. Emmet Walsh as Calvin Murks
• Charles Durning as Bill Flower
• Joel Grey as Willy Stone
• Samantha Mathis as Tiffany
• Chris Penn as Floyd
• Pearl Jones as Louise
• Jordan Spainhour as Floyd Jr.
• Paul Auster as Driver

• The Music of Chance at IMDb