There are a lot of reasons to see Lay the Favourite and let me leap in there and just start reeling the list off - Stephen Frears; D.V. DeVincentis; Rebecca Hall; Bruce Willis; Catherine Zeta-Jones; Vince Vaughn; Joshua Jackson; Frank Grillo, and Corbin Bernsen.

Okay I may have stretched things with the last name there but that's a damn good set of reasons to see the film, or at least to give the trailer a try. Want another one? The story is based on the memoirs of Beth Raymer who actually entered the world we're about to see.

Beth Raymer's story is an interesting one and brought to film by D.V. DeVincentis and Stephen Frears makes it all the more appealing. Here's the blurb for her book Lay the Favourite ( / ):

Beth Raymer arrived in Las Vegas in 2001, hoping to land a job as a cocktail waitress at one of the big casinos. In the meantime, she lived in a $17-a-night motel with her dog, Otis, and waited tables at a low-rent Thai restaurant. One day, one of her regular customers told her about a job she thought Beth would be perfect for and sent her to see Dink, of Dink Inc. Dink was a professional sports gambler-one of the biggest in Vegas. He was looking for a right-hand man-someone who would show up on time, who had a head for numbers, and who didn't steal. She got the job.

Lay the Favorite is the story of Beth Raymer's years in the high-stakes, high-anxiety world of sports betting-a period that saw the fall of the local bookie and the rise of the freewheeling, unregulated offshore sports book, and with it the elevation of sports betting in popular culture. As the business explodes, Beth rises-from assistant to expert, trusted and seasoned enough to open an offshore booking office in the Caribbean with a few associates, men who leave their families up north to make a quick killing, while donning new tropical personas fueled by abundant drugs and local girlfriends, and who one by one succumb to their vices. They lie, cheat, steal, and run, until Beth is the last man standing.

Now take that story and throw in the talent above and you could have something really exciting. It certainly seems that way by the blurb and the trailer, and Rebecca Hall looks fantastic in it, have you seen her legs? Oh, wait...where was I? Boy that woman can act.

Here's the blurb for the film:

Set in the wild, extremely funny and lightning-paced world of legal - and illegal - sports gambling, Lay the Favourite follows unpredictable dreamer Beth as she goes from in-home stripper in Tallahassee to gambler's assistant in Las Vegas, working for Dink, one of the most successful gamblers in the business. She takes to the work like a natural, but makes the risky bet to fall for Dink, much to the chagrin of his retired showgirl wife, Tulip. That bet goes South, and a triangular war ensues. Against Dink's protests, Beth goes to work for the flamboyant, unstable Rosie who runs a less-than-legal operation in NYC, then for his doomed hyper-speed online sportsbook in the betting Babylon of Curacao. When Beth's risky gambles result in her innocent boyfriend threatened with prison, she must reunite with Dink, face up to the fearsome Tulip, risk jail, and return to NYC to confront her responsibilities. Can she beat the odds and win the day?

Let's see how it turns out in the trailer for the film which comes through HeyUGuys and The Playlist:

I like the style of the film and I do love the way that it doesn't fire off standard comic laughs and we get that quirky, real world humour coming through, just think of High Fidelity or Tamara Drewe for similar styles of comedy, you know, real comedy not manufactured tick box film comedy. I'm in.