Gambling is not the star of The Card Counter
But Oscar Isaac certainly is. In theaters and available to rent for $19.99.
The Short Take:
More about facing trauma than gambling, Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter gives Oscar Isaac a chance to impress with his simmering performance, but needs to invest more in its supporting characters. Worth a watch at some point, as long as you’re okay with the dark, violent subject matter.
The Long Take:
The Card Counter? A more accurate title would be The Guilt-Ridden Military Ex-Con Who Finds Some Semblance of Peace at the Blackjack Table. And, if that kind of intense, interior turmoil is what a viewer signs up for, then great. But a glossy, cool, hijinks-laden film this is not. Director Paul Schrader takes us to countless casinos, but only to show us shabby convention center chairs and stoic faces. We hear the mundane din of chips dropping and cards flipping. It’s all very plain, very drab, and a little sad.
Gambling in this film is but a backdrop for a story about the trauma Oscar Isaac’s character, William Tell, experiences as a soldier assigned to a torture facility in Abu Grhaib. We get several extended flashbacks to his time there, and they, as a result, make the film more about that than anything else. These scenes are very well shot, mostly because the camera distorts images in a way that reflects Tell’s memories and how they have warped him. But the tradeoff here is that, rather than a sporting tale about Tell’s climb to the top of a poker competition, which, in the first act of the film, a viewer may mistakenly expect, we get a very serious movie that does not mind showing us abject depravity and violence. And that’s okay, because it’s thought-provoking. I’m just out here managing your expectations.
The Card Counter is at its best when it positions viewers as voyeurs into Tell’s post-military service, post-prison sentence psyche. Characters, including Tell himself, rarely comment on his rituals and hang-ups, which means viewers bear witness to and must make sense of what they see. I found myself even trying to read into what drink he ordered in every scene and thought about what each one told me about him. And I will be vague so as not to spoil it, but there’s one very eccentric behavior Isaac initiates when he arrives at a new place that is as unsettling as it is mesmerizing. Oscar Isaac gives a subdued yet potent performance; his William Tell very rarely emotes, but Isaac’s movement and gaze convey a volcanic rage bubbling just beneath the surface. Past roles of his I’ve seen have been much more outwardly charismatic, but this one demands that he be a little socially awkward, all enigmatic, and yet still like-able. And it worked on me; I cared what happened to his character and wanted him to be okay in the end.
Outside of Oscar Isaac, though, I largely agree with The Next Best Picture Podcast, which complained that once the film brings other characters into William Tell’s world, it’s much less compelling. They argued that Tye Sheridan, who is probably best known as Wade from Ready Player One, was completely miscast. I’m not sure I’d blame casting or Sheridan himself. I think his character is just grossly underwritten and extraneous once you set aside how he moves the plot forward. He’s an aimless, whiny college dropout whose only sense of purpose revolves around avenging the psychological damage his father also endured in Abu Ghraib. But we never learn anything beyond that.
Several panelists on the same Next Best Picture episode also did not think Tiffany Haddish worked as the poker player stable manager. The Big Picture, on the other hand, loved seeing her in a more serious role and thought she had great chemistry with Oscar Isaac. I’m somewhere in between. I agree that Haddish played off Oscar Isaac well; when she’s flirting with him, I really believe that she likes William Tell (and not Oscar Isaac, who remains handsome despite their attempt to make his eyes dull and his hair look like a helmet). But it seems like she’s constantly holding back. Chris Ryan on The Big Picture framed this as Schrader challenging Haddish as an actress. I see it more as suppressing her; I wish that instead of trying to reign in her electricity that he had just written her character in a way that actually let her do her thing. At Sundance last year I loved her performance in On the Count of Three, and that was a more serious role as well. So it’s not like she can only do comedy.
What’s crazy about Oscar Isaac/William Tell himself being compelling but the rest of the characters not holding up to that is that there is an excessive amount of exposition throughout the film. Not enough of it was useful. And there are several different types of exposition too. Many scenes in the casinos feature voiceover from Oscar Isaac gambler-splaining. How card counting works, how casinos make money, what makes a poker player talented, etc. But, as I mentioned earlier, the gambling part of this film doesn’t actually matter to the story at all. It’s not a movie about gambling; it’s a movie about an interesting person who happens to be very good at gambling. Tell also literally has dear diary scenes, reflecting on his life as he scribbles in a notebook. I thought this undermined the rituals and odd behavior I mentioned at the top of this review. Even Haddish’s character gets an internal monologue. I respect this as a stylistic choice in general, but in this particular narrative, it made me disengage and drift away.
That said, this does work as a story about one person who’s been through a lot and tries to live his life as best he can in spite of it. And not at all in a cliched way. It never urges us to empathize with Tell as a token veteran. Nor does it get on a moral high horse the atrocities he has committed. I found myself thinking of other recent films about the shameful misdeeds of America’s military and the trauma that inflicts on soldiers, like Adam McKay’s Vice and the Russo Bros’ Cherry. Both of those films try way too hard to finger wag at horrible acts that are obviously horrible or, in the case of Cherry, draw out pain and suffering in an overly-demonstrative way. In The Card Counter, one individual attempts to reckon with what happened on a personal level. It doesn’t downplay the horrors but is somehow modest and believable. Despite my complaints about the film, I was, in the end, engrossed in the reckoning.