The Card Counter Review
8.5/10
Nobody in Hollywood today captures existential stories of damaged men better than Paul Schrader. His writing has a particular jazz rhythm to it. From a distance, a bystander may interpret it as loose, but there is a precision to the movements, a series of snapshots, displaying every detail of a person’s inner world. The Card Counter is not a gambling film. It has gambling in it, but that is not what the film is interested in showing. There are usually two portrayals of gambling in films: The cool kind in Casino Royale and the seedy approach of Robert Altman’s California Split. Both can be compelling in their own ways, but they paint the circumstances in two distinct camps.
Schrader’s approach to gambling is one of loneliness and routine. William Tell, played with brilliant, repressed intensity by Oscar Isaac, lives on the road. He is not a high-stakes man, he sticks to low-risk games. He has an uncanny ability to read people and count cards. This mathematical precision gets him just enough money to get by, but not much else. He wears the same clothes and styles his hair the same way. There is chaos and uncertainty in any form of gambling, but he can control it. This life does not bring joy, but it provides a sense of purpose and movement.
He does not want to stay in one location too long. He even wraps white sheets around all the furniture in whichever motel room he stays so he will leave no trace. William is a ghost haunting the casinos. This is the life he built for himself. The various gambling scenes are not slick or grimy; they are almost sterile in their commitment to the procedure. There are no quips or banter between the competing players, no excessive stylistic flourishes. There is just William, the players, and the game. That is all that matters to him.
He meets La Linda at one of the many casinos and the two have a moment of recognition from previous games. She runs a stable, a group of investors who bankroll gamblers for a portion of their winnings. She offers William the opportunity of involvement. She is baffled as to why he only settles for low-stakes gambling when he could be making so much more. He turns her down, unwilling to commit to anything involving substantial risk and pressure. They part ways for the time being, but there is an immediate spark between them. La Linda is played by Tiffany Haddish, who I’ve only seen in over-the-top comedies. Casting her in a slow-paced and intense drama turns out to be an inspired choice. She brings an infectious energy to her character that balances out William’s morose intensity.
William is at a security-industry convention in Atlantic City when he attends a seminar held by a retired Major John Gordo played with understated force by Willem Dafoe. He ducks out, but not before getting confronted by a young man, Cirk, played by a somber and internalized Tye Sheridan. Cirk gives William his number and tells him he can tell William knows who John Gordo is. Here is where the darkest parts of the film come into play. We don’t see Dafoe much, but he makes a lasting impact when he is on screen.
We find out William’s real name and his background in the military. He was involved in the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse, where Gordo was his superior. Cirk’s father was also in William’s unit and was so traumatized by his experiences that he ended up killing himself. Gordo was a civilian contractor and escaped prosecution, but William went to jail for 8 years. Cirk wants to kidnap, torture, and kill Gordo for what he did to his family. William is not into the idea and wants to steer Cirk away from the violence that destroyed his life.
The brief glimpses of William’s previous life are unflinching and ferocious. The film does not shy away from showing his indoctrination into torture and violence. These moments don’t linger on the bloodshed. I think it would be detrimental to the message of the film to marinate in the savagery. This is not a voyeuristic exercise in excess, these snapshots of horror are all we need to gain some degree of comprehension for his actions. We can never truly understand what made him do this, but we can at least step back and see who he is. That is the key to a great Schrader film, not judging his characters. They can be twisted and cruel, but he can still get inside their head and be honest in his portrayal of them.
He decides to take the boy on the road with him and eventually accepts a deal with La Linda to join the stable. I won’t spoil where the story goes from there. This is a slow-burn character study about personal redemption and forgiving yourself for past sins. Schrader has a remarkable ability to allow a story to simmer beneath the surface. The boiling point is gradual, but we are taken on a descent into the psyche of a broken man. This shares some similarities with his previous work, but it still manages to put an interesting spin on familiar ideas.
Schrader has gone through a fantastic resurgence in the past few years. He has stumbled a few times with films like The Canyons and Dog Eat Dog. The Card Counter shows his fire is still burning. He dissects and showcases masculinity without insulting who these men are. They are burdened and shaped by their past traumas, but they fight through the pain. The result is not always pleasant. This is what adds so much moral complexity to his work. The Card Counter can be seen as a compilation of his previous themes. He certainly has delved into these murky waters before. That familiarity does not lessen the impact of the film’s culmination.
His salvation does not come via a brutal shootout with crooked men. It comes from him reaching out to Cirk and trying to guide him away from the path of ruination. There are certainly parallels to be made between him and Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, but here there is more hope to his fate. As we follow him through his routines at the casinos, we fall in line with his rhythms, much like with Schrader’s writing. I’ve seen this film criticized for its pace, but to me, it is a deliberate approach. To be properly immersed in his world, you need to be in his head. This life he has carved for himself is one of solitude and detachment. I don’t see any other way the film could have gone. His dynamics with La Linda and Cirk are sincere and bring out the heart in the story.
By the time the film got to the end, I knew the destination was inevitable. As Willian says, any man can tilt. You can tilt. That shift towards cruelty can be an eventual piece-by-piece decline or a turn on a dime. Once a man has been broken, those pieces may be scattered to the winds. You can spend the rest of your life trying to find them, only to lose each one again as you try to rebuild. Schrader may have explored similar ideas in his previous films, but they are just as powerful now as when he started out.
