“Two for the Money” offers up the perverse pleasure in watching that growling old cat Al Pacino toy with poor, overmatched mouse Matt McConaughey for two hours.

And when Pacino isn’t worrying the kid to death, playing the latest in a string of post-“Scent of a Woman” mentors, he lets Armand Assante have a go at him.

A movie about big-time sports gambling and the folks who tout their picks on cable TV, on the Internet and elsewhere, it’s a morality tale with no morals, a coming-of-age journey that is no journey at all.

But Pacino gives this would-be “Wall Street” of the oddsmakers a crackling moment or two, with or without the “Hoo haas.”

McConaughey plays Brandon, a former college quarterback who blew out his knee on national TV, who still harbors hopes of a pro tryout, and who keeps his foot in the door, as it were, by picking winners for Vegas gambler 900 lines. Pacino is Walter Abrams, the high-living New York gambling “adviser” who runs a stable of touts (handicappers, prognosticators) out of a four-story brownstone. The new kid picks at an 80 percent success rate. He’s soon the rising star of the $200 billion sports-gaming industry.

Ex-football star Brandon Lang (Matthew McConaughey), left, and sports gambling impresario Walter Abrams (Al Pacino) discuss the highs and lows of betting in the high-stakes drama Two

Brandon doesn’t bet himself. He’s seen what it does to him and others. Walter is also a recovering gambler, and a guy with a heart condition. And he seems intent on grooming Brandon, whom he renames John Anthony, to take over his business, perhaps even his marriage (to Rene Russo).

“I’m trying to build an empire around you,” he tells his protege.

The movie suggests that the reason for Brandon’s success is his heartfelt sincerity. He really believes that the winners he picks will win, no matter how many states in which sports gambling is illegal. Isn’t that sweet?

All Brandon needs to do is keep picking winners, live large and workout with his shirt off from time to time.

The screenplay, by Dan Gilroy (he wrote the bombs “Freejack” and “Chasers”), has some interesting elements – the gambling impresario who can’t gamble, the kid corrupted by the big time, the odd marriage of co-dependency. But the director of “Taking Lives” (D.J. Caruso) can’t wrestle these dark and light themes into a coherent story.

Cinematographer Conrad W. Hall should not be confused with his Oscar-winning father, Conrad L. Hall. Rarely has a woman meant to be a younger man’s object of desire been photographed to less advantage.

McConaughey does his drawling, grinning, back-slapping shtick here. But when he’s called to show the dark side, he can’t deliver. Pacino, then Assante (as a mob-connected high roller who doesn’t like it when his picker’s picks don’t win) eat McConaughey for lunch.

The lighter moments work, and the flip con game that these masters of the universe play on a gambling-addicted public can be funny. Even a Gambler’s Anonymous meeting is made amusing without belittling the work the organization does.

It’s when gambling’s inevitable downward slide kicks in that “Two for the Money” takes the penalty. The movie makes a bet that the filmmakers can’t cover.