You Lose
Sonny Briggs (Sean Carrigan) is a Vegas limo driver with a problem, he likes to gamble and he has racked up some big debts in the process with sexy debt collector Carmen Rawlins (Corinne Van Ryck de Groot) after his blood. But Sonny is offered a way out, if he can survive 24 hours with out gambler Joseph (Billy Zane) and his men killing him then he walks away with enough money to clear all his debts and live a life of luxury.
5 seconds, it took just 5 seconds for me to realise that "Bet Your Life" was going to be a painful slog and those 5 seconds featured some mind numbing narration about how the narrator got to be in the situation we see them in as they fall over the rail of a flight of stairs. It is such a cliche set up that I just knew I was not going to enjoy the rest of the movie. As for the rest of the movie what we get is Sonny running around trying to avoid being killed not only by Joseph but anyone else who wants him dead over his unpaid debts. It is ridiculously unoriginal and not very entertaining despite Joel Silver being involved in the movie.
But here is the thing as it appears that Sean Carrigan and Corinne Van Ryck de Groot were the winners of a TV competition to be the next action star and this movie was their prize. Well on this neither of them will be a big action star but I am sure both will have a decent career in supporting roles in made for DVD action movies. Fortunately "Bet Your Life" features Billy Zane and he delivers an entertaining over the top performance which has aspects of Nicolas Cage about it.
What this all boils down to is that "Bet Your Life" isn't very good and if it wasn't for an enjoyably over the top performance from Billy Zane this movie would be completely pointless.
