Directed by: Paul Schrader
Starring: Oscar Isaac, Tiffany Haddish, Tye Sheridan, Willem Defoe
Despite its title, “The card Counter” has very little to do with counting cards. This low budget crime drama is the latest from director Paul Schrader who is probably best known for his collaborations with Martin Scorsesse, writing Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, the Last Temptation of Christ. This movie’s writing is on a significantly lower level to those all-time greats. Schrader is preoccupied with obsessive, angry, and self-destructive characters that don’t fit in easily with the rest of society and this movie is no different.
William Tell (played by Oscar Issacs) is a professional gambler and card counter who travels across the country from casino to casino playing cards making a modest living. One day he is intercepted by a young man named Cirk (played by Tye Sheridan) who’s father served with William when he was stationed in a military prison in Abu Ghraib. Cirk’s father developed PTSD steaming from the torturous acts he was forced to perform in the prison, which lead to his eventually suicide. The man who taught the toture tactics in Abu Ghraib was Major John Gordo (played by Willem Difoe). Cirk devises a plan to kidnap, torture, and kill Gordo and wants William’s help. William refuses to help Cirk enact his revenge but feels a desire to help the young man so he takes him under his wing and brings him along on his gambling trips. William also meets La Linda (played by Tiffany Hddish) who is a backer for a stable of gamblers. Although initially reluctant to partner up with La Linda, William eventually decides to join her stable and enter into the World Series of Poker in hopes of earning enough money to help Cirk get out of debt.
Let’s briefly talk about poker scenes in this movie, I say briefly because while there are a lot of them they are fairly inconsequential to the overall plot. There is nothing that this movie does that hasn’t been done better by several other movies when it comes to gambling. The 2008 movie 21, while flawed, explains card counting in a much more entertaining way than the Card Counter does. If you’re looking for a movie about a methodical gambler who travels from casino to casino making his living off of small victories and picks up a young protege, Paul Thomas Anderson’s debut feature Hard 8 is a vastly more watchable movie than this one. And if you want to watch realistic, or at least somewhat realistic, Texas hold’em action exploring the nature of “going tilt” just watch Rounders; it doesn’t get much better than that. So I guess what I’m saying is, if you’ve come to the Card Counter looking for a great poker or gambling movie, I would suggest looking elsewhere.
That being said, I think the Card Counter succeeds in other places. For one, the atmosphere of the movie is very unique. William’s life revolves around cheap hotel rooms and poorly lit casino floors and the look of the film reflects that reality. The film kind of looks cheap, sometimes two characters will be sitting at the same table and their faces will be lit completely differently. This might be due to the film’s low budget or the COVID restrictions or maybe this was just Schrader’s vision for the movie. Regardless of the reason, this “cheap” look actually works for the movie.
Another strong point of this movie is the score by Robert Levon Been. The score is like a pounding heartbeat throughout the whole movie and occasionally you will hear a few gasps of air. It adds to the tension, as the film progresses you start to get this feeling in the pit of your stomach that we are heading towards an abrupt outburst of violence, unfortunately when that tension is resolved it is ultimately unsatisfying but the score is effective nonetheless.
Most of the movie is relatively still, many of the scenes are either at a poker table playing cards or just two or three characters talking to each other at bars or at diners. This is juxtaposed by the flashbacks to the torture in the Abu Ghraib prisons. The Abu Ghraib scenes are extremely visceral. The quiet score is replaced with blaring heavy metal and the Schrader makes use of a wide angle fisheye lens that makes you feel like these scenes are set in some other hellscape dimension. These scenes can be hard to watch but are effective at showing the brutality and inhumane nature of that prison. The bright and somewhat abrasive flashback scenes really standout compared to the rest of the movie which is pretty flat and ordinary.
The performances in the movie are a mixed bag. Oscar Issac is fantastic, as per usual. He is playing an extremely internal character, not dissimilar to Travis Bickle, another Schrader creation. Issac is almost motionless in his performance and he does a good job of portraying a man who seems very controlled and deliberate on the surface with a boiling rage and anger underneath.
The other performances are not as strong. Tiffany Haddish is pretty much wasted in this movie. She is one of the most interesting, funny, and charismatic performers of our day and she is forced to read bland, poorly written dialogue with nearly no inflection whatsoever. The writing is very up and down, there are some scenes that are well written, mainly when a character is giving a monologue but if two people are having a conversation, it always seems stilted and awkward. Haddish suffers the most from the poor script. Her character really has no arch or purpose in the movie, other than sleeping with William towards the end of the film. Haddish and Issacs do have a weird yet powerful chemistry though, and I wouldn’t mind seeing them together again, just in a better movie.
Tye Sheridan gives a passable performance. He is able to give Cirk this feeling of aimlessness mixed with anger that works well for the character but again the script is not doing him any favours. Cirk is one of the more interesting characters though because he represents the generational toll that PTSD can have on a family. Cirk’s father was stationed with Wiliam at Abu Ghraib and had to torture the prisoners there. Those traumatic events lead to him developing PTSD and eventually committing suicide. That trauma of war didn’t just affect him, it affected his whole family. Cirk goes on a mission to avenge his father’s death, which leads to his own demise and that is a vicious cycle that many military families go through.
The themes that this movie explores are interesting but it is definitely not for everyone. Schrader makes directorial choices in this movie that might put some people off. He is always deliberant in what he is doing but that doesn’t mean that it’s always good. If you’ve liked Schrader’s other movies you will probably like this one but if you are not really a fan of his or haven’t heard of him at all your experience might vary. Oscar Issac gives a really strong performance and while the atmosphere creates a nice build up of tension the ending is pretty disappointing. I think that this is a good movie that is difficult to recommend because its shortcomings will probably be too substantial of a barrier for most people to overcome.
