{"id":17099,"date":"2021-09-08T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-08T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=17099"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:14:08","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:14:08","slug":"review-the-card-counter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/review-the-card-counter\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Card Counter<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Over a nearly five-decade career, Paul Schrader has made a specialty of stories about loners, drifters, and outcasts (and sometimes outlaws as well). The typical Schrader protagonist \u2013 from Taxi Driver<\/em> to American Gigolo<\/em> to Light Sleeper<\/em> to First Reformed<\/em> \u2013 spends much of their time alone, in their room, contemplating, reflecting, often writing. Yet even within this rarified type, the man at the center of The Card Counter<\/em>, who calls himself William Tell, is a man onto himself, as exemplified by his motel check-in ritual: he takes the paintings off the walls, unplugs the phone and clock radio, removes the literature, and covers everything in the room with his own grey sheets. This is a man of solitude, and of ritual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile I was in prison I learned how to count cards,\u201d he tells us, and explains exactly how it\u2019s done (with the help of clever on-screen text). Tell explains the odds and strategies of his method with efficiency and detachment. He drives from casino to casino, around the country. He buys in, he counts his cards, and he leaves his tables quietly, and politely, when he\u2019s up \u2013 but not by too much. \u201cIf you don\u2019t play for money, why do you play?\u201d he\u2019s asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt passes the time,\u201d he replies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To call Tell a loner is an understatement \u2013 early on, a fellow gambler invites him to have a drink with some friends, to which he replies, \u201cAh, I\u2019ve met enough people.\u201d So when he meets a young man (Tye Sheridan) who says Tell knew his father, he responds in an unexpected way: \u201cYou wanna ride with me?\u201d he asks. \u201cIt gets lonely, I\u2019d like company.\u201d This is clearly false, based on literally every thing we\u2019ve learned about the character. So what is he really up to?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It turns out that The Card Counter<\/em>, like so many of Schrader\u2019s films, is about redemption. \u201cThere is also a moral weight a man can accrue,\u201d he writes in his journal. \u201cIt\u2019s a weight that cannot be removed.\u201d So while this gambling narrative sets itself up as some kind of an underdog sports movie (not unlike The Color of Money<\/em>, by Schrader\u2019s frequent collaborator Martin Scorsese, here credited as executive producer), even introducing a loathsome antagonist whom he\u2019ll sure face in the climactic Big Game, Schrader undercuts those conventions entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It takes a particular kind of actor to make this material work, and young Mr. Sheridan doesn\u2019t quite nail the off-beat rhythm of Schrader\u2019s dialogue, coming off wooden in the process. But Isaac is never less than credible, playing Tell\u2019s road rituals and routines without allowing the character to become dull or one-note. Much of his juice comes from Tiffany Haddish, who first becomes a business partner (she \u201cstakes\u201d high-caliber players for big-spending \u201cinvestors\u201d), and then more. There\u2019s something scorching about the way these two characters \u2013 and actors \u2013 look at each other in their two-scenes; they\u2019re not flirting in dialogue, but they\u2019re constantly flirting in their gazes and pauses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As is Schrader\u2019s style, the pauses are where most of the movie lives anyway. His stripped-down, Bressonian visual style matches the cold, hard prose of Tell\u2019s journal, and of the vaguely depressing gambling scenes, where the faint, cheerless music of casino slots is only punctuated by the occasional whoop of a winner. Alexander Dynan\u2019s camera is so sparse, so still, so much of the time, that it when it moves, it matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the austerity of the technique is also, this time, a bit of a red herring \u2013 there\u2019s an entire second level to Tell\u2019s story, revealed in flashbacks shot via an extreme wide-angle lens technique that hits even harder in comparison to the photography of the main narrative. The trailers don\u2019t reveal this thread, so I\u2019ll say no more, but it does allow the director space for the kind of wild experimentation he clearly also longs to do; a film like Dog Eat Dog<\/em> feels like an explosion of a repressed id, and while that\u2019s certainly not one of his best films, it\u2019s also an assurance that with this director, we can never be entirely sure of what we\u2019re going to get. So the question becomes: can he pull these seemingly disparate threads together, combining two very different stories and moods?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d say that he does, though just barely. But his ambition is admirable, as is his inclination to both serve and subvert his established storytelling style. \u201cI keep to modest goals,\u201d Tell explains, early on. \u201cI prefer to work under the radar.\u201d If you know enough about Schrader, you know he isn\u2019t just talking about gambling. \"\"\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

B+<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

“The Card Counter” is out Friday in limited release.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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