If you're familiar with the work of Paul Schrader, you may already know what to expect from "The Card Counter." There is an alienated male protagonist who suffers in isolation, weighing past his transgressions and future opportunities. He is part of the seedy underbelly of America, and gets involved in a criminal enterprise that inevitably goes wrong. Violence is perhaps an inevitability. It's almost surprising that Schrader hasn't made a film about the gambling world before now, because it's an environment well suited to exploring his favorite themes and subject matter.
Like all of Schrader's recent films, the production here feels a little oddly cobbled together. Oscar Isaac plays the title character, William Tell, to perfection. Tell is a coolly anonymous professional gambler who travels from casino to casino across the country, stays under the radar, and lives out of cheap motel rooms by choice. Isaac's co-stars, however, are considerably less impressive. I appreciate that Tiffany Haddish is being given a chance to stretch a little playing La Linda, a woman who stakes and manages gamblers, and becomes Tell's love interest. However, she's noticeably green at playing a dramatic part like this, and the film might have suffered considerably if Isaacs and Schrader weren't able to pick up the slack. Similarly, Tye Sheridan feels a little oddly placed as Cirk (pronounced Kirk), a young drifter who turns out to have some interesting personal connections to Tell, and ends up traveling with him. There is also a villain, John Gordo, played by Willem Dafoe, who has very little screen time and mostly functions as a looming, sinister presence.
When "The Card Counter" is being a moody portrait of a damaged man living a lonely existence, it's fantastic. Oscar Isaac's detached, nuanced performance immediately draws comparisons to similar characters played by Robert DeNiro and Alain Delon. Tell is a much sadder, more resigned character than Schrader's usual protagonists. His guilt is more palpable, and his capacity for violence less so. Schrader does a good job of coming up with these little conceits to help fill in Tell's backstory, like his habit of wrapping all the items in his hotel room in white sheets, or all the flashbacks to his time as a soldier being shot with warped fisheye lenses. In the present, he seems to occupy an endless series of bars, hotel rooms, and casinos, all totally stripped of any glamour or glitz. There's some thoughtful use of internal monologue, and the depictions of Tell's skill at the gambling are excellent. Everyone involved clearly did their homework.
Schrader is less successful when it comes to maneuvering Tell into re-engaging with the world outside his self-imposed bubble. I wouldn't be surprised if budget and Covid challenges impacted the production, because the film often feels like a scaled down version of something bigger. While I can certainly see what he was going for, and I admire his ambitions, the execution falls short in several places. Tell's relationships with La Linda and Cirk aren't established well enough to provide adequate emotional stakes to the action. I like the way that the script leaves red herrings everywhere for those of us who know the usual tropes of gambling movies - addiction, debts, rivalries, and mentor/protege relationships. Once the actual conflict and moral dilemma are made clear, however, I couldn't help feeling frustrated with how much energy had been expended on the misdirections.
I think it comes down to "The Card Counter" feeling a little too sparsely populated and unbalanced. Isaacs is so good, and Schrader has devoted so much effort to highlighting the performance that there's precious little room for anything else. All the other characters in the film are distressingly flat in comparison, partly due to the actors, partly because they aren't fleshed out well enough. Attempts to immerse us in the culture of the gambling world end up feeling half-hearted, because none of the other gamblers are really characters, and there's little sense of urgency in the tournaments. I've seen "The Card Counter" billed as a thriller or neo-noir, but it's not a good fit for either genre.
I wonder if I might just have a problem with Paul Schrader's films in general. I wasn't much of a fan of "First Reformed," though I've grown to appreciate it more over time. I appreciate his work from the 70s, but don't really enjoy it. "The Card Counter," in spite of its flaws, is easily my favorite Paul Schrader work to date. Make of that what you will.
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