The Card Counter
Despite a great lead performance, the pacing and muddled dialogue of this piece fails to entertain.
Ex-military man William Tell (Oscar Isaac) treks from low-rent, discount casino to casino, counting cards and winning small dollar values so as not to draw too much attention. His regimented life is disrupted, however, when he attends a lecture from Gordo (William Dafoe), an old military commander whose torture tactics led to William’s jail sentence more than a decade ago. Cirk (Tye Sheridan) gets his attention at this lecture, intent on getting revenge on Gordo for his father, whose similar story to William ended in suicide. William takes Cirk under his wing, and accepts La Linda’s (Tiffany Haddish) offer to gamble in her stable on the World Series of Poker Tour, in an effort to save up a nest egg and get Cirk back on the right track - in college, and not kidnapping, torturing and killing Gordo.
Paul Schrader is known for his downbeat, intense takes on subject matter, and The Card Counter certainly doesn’t break the mould in the slightest - this is dourly presented content, breaking through the imagined glamour of casino’s to present a largely dusty, monotonous, manipulative experience.
The plot unfurls incredibly slowly, and with little indication of any structure. While the ending ties it all together and helps provide that long desired structure, the endless waiting throughout makes this feel snail paced.
Oscar Isaac is fantastic, and holds this movie up with a presence that is calm, hurt, and dangerous all at once. But Haddish and Sheridan struggle with the incredibly poor dialogue, which comes out clunky, unrealistic and shoddy. Dafoe, meanwhile, is a caricature of himself in a blink and you’ll miss him role.
There are some nice moments, particularly in the visual flair space. Tell’s obsession with wrapping every item in his hotel room plays very well, and similarly the interesting cameras used for the flashbacks to Abu Ghraib provide some much needed difference to the otherwise monotonous piece, but it just isn’t enough to save this dour, dreary film.
