Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained: ‘St. Vincent’ a Worthwhile Investment

It’s Oscar season, so I’m planning to talk about movies a lot in the next couple of weeks.
In honor of the season I’ll make a point to watch some horse racing-related movies and write about them here as well. I’ll start off with a movie that’s out right now and was campaigning hard for an Oscar nomination, “St. Vincent.”
Bill Murray, who was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his performance in the dark comedy, didn’t land an Oscar nomination. But his performance was among his best, doing a character that suits him.
St. Vincent is a film about family, but it is by no means a family film. Vincent, played by Murray, is an aging drunk who has found himself dead broke after drowning his home in a reverse mortgage and blowing all the proceeds on booze, prostitutes, and horrible bets at Belmont Park.

Vincent is being chased by everyone he owes money to … from the bank to his wife’s convalescent home to the Russian “lady of the night” that he keeps company with to a hard-guy shylock at the track. So far, the cast of characters is pretty heavy on the grimmer side of life.
Enter Oliver, a 12-year-old boy who moves in next door to Vincent. Oliver’s single-mom, Maggie, works long shifts at the hospital and asks Vincent to look after Oliver after school until she gets home. In need of money, Vincent reluctantly agrees. The ornery, nihilistic Vincent softens around the big-hearted, wise boy and the two develop a bond.
The movie follows the pair as they fend off bullies, look after Vincent’s ailing wife and help a pregnant Russian exotic dancer navigate the American health care system. Most importantly, Vincent tutors Oliver in playing the ponies at Belmont Park.
At times, the handicapping lessons are cringe-inducing. Vincent tells Oliver that the odds are just what “some bookie in Vegas thinks the horse’s chances are,” which couldn’t be any further from the truth. He also tells Oliver that a trifecta is “high risk, high reward,” which only gets it half right. At a 50-cent minimum bet, a trifecta could hardly be considered high risk. It’s maybe more correct to say it is low probability, high reward. But the lesson ends up being a crucial one - Oliver decides he likes the allure of longshots.
“If you’re going to win, why not win big?” He picks a trifecta that Vincent instantly calculates (incredibly!) as 800-to-1. Oliver hands over his $7 in lunch money. Vincent adds $3 of his own to the till (“this is called mitigation,” he tells him) and they make the bet. I’m sure you can guess what happened, so I hope I’m not spoiling too much by telling you that they won the bet.
Vincent then teaches Oliver an even more important lesson: when you win a big bet, don’t celebrate. Pretend you lost. You never know if someone to whom you owe money is watching.
The scenes at Belmont Park were filmed during the 2013 Grade 1 Man o’ War Stakes, and you can see the Man o’ War saddlecloths on the horses. The race was won that year by Shug McGaughey’s Boisterous, and Murray participated in the trophy presentation after the race.
Later in the film, Oliver’s dad tries to use the visits to the track as evidence that Oliver’s mom wasn’t looking out for the boy’s welfare, which at first was disappointing. But in the movie’s triumphant conclusion, Oliver states proudly to his parents and his entire school during an assembly that he doesn’t regret his trips to Belmont to gamble with Vincent. He tells his mom that he learned math at the track, which is true, but he tells the entire school that at the track Vincent taught Oliver that in life you sometimes need to take big risks — that nothing ventured leads to nothing gained.
What Vincent and Oliver gain in St. Vincent is a very unlikely family. A mean, old drunk, a Russian prostitute, a nurse and a 12-year-old boy find each other in each of their moments of need and help each other tackle pretty massive obstacles that none of them could do all on their own.
The movie asks the question “what is a saint?” It answers with Vincent, an unsaintly man who, when placed in a position to choose to help others, always makes the saintly choice.