I did what regular moviegoers do -- I made the trek to the theatre. So, at the Angelika Film Center on Thursday night, missing the first NFL game of the season and in pouring rain, my wife and I walked in.
She’s all for seeing Oscar Isaac on screen, perhaps for different reasons than I. Yet I was a lot more excited that this was a Paul Schrader movie. His First Reformed (Ethan Hawke) made my Top 10 list a few years ago, and I’ve enjoyed the films he co-wrote (Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Affliction). And even the movies of his I thought were flawed (Light of Day, Bringing Out The Dead, City Hall, TheMosquito Coast, The Last Temptation of Christ), are still worth checking out. And poker movies are so in my wheelhouse. While I hate watching Texas Hold ‘Em tournaments on TV, I love cards with my friends, and poker scenes on screen. House of Games (David Mamet) and TheSting have two of the best. As a kid I watched The Cincinnati Kid, California Split, and Big Handfor the Little Lady on regular TV, and loved those. [side note: all my high school friends are obsessed with Rounders, which is good, but not as good as all the films I just mentioned]. An improv comedy movie that got bad reviews -- The Grand (Woody Harrelson, Richard Kind, Dennis Farina, Jason Alexander, Ray Romano) -- was actually a bit of fun for me.
Two distracting things about this movie. The first was Isaac’s character being named William Tell. I just kept thinking of the Overture when they said his name; second was Tiffany Haddish. I like her on screen and in interviews, but she just wasn’t right for the part. She plays a woman who runs a stable of professional poker players that need backing from folks with money. When Isaac talks to her, the look on her face is like she’s about to laugh, say something funny, or is just confused. If I had to pick a third thing that bothered me, it would be Tye Sheridan as Cirk (who for some reason, always informs people it’s spelled with a “C” and not a “K”). Sheridan was great in Mud (Matthew McConaughey) and a few other films, but something about him in this bugged me. I let a lot of that slide, because his character is supposed to be a troubled youth with no direction.
We find out that Tell learned to count cards while doing a 10-year stretch in prison. I thought about the documentary on Rickey Jay (RIP) and how he had a horrible childhood and spent hours and hours each night, learning to handle cards in the dark, and mastering all his card tricks. Tell does exactly what I’ve said people that count cards should do -- go to casinos and just win small amounts. And while they showed you the various ways it is done and gives you an advantage over the house (they did skip the part where casinos use multiple decks, and reshuffle when the shoe gets halfway down to keep people that count cards from getting much of an advantage). There are a few other things they got wrong about gambling, but it mostly worked.
The blackjack and poker scenes are never all that exciting, which I was fine with. Schrader can do the slow burn just fine, and Tell is interesting and unpredictable. The problem is that you start to wonder -- who will this movie really appeal to? Certainly card fans won’t care for it. And if you’re going to see what kind of character study Schrader gave us, well...it falls a bit in that department, too. Not to mention at least three things happened in this movie that you just can’t buy happening.
I’ve always said how it’s weird that movie audiences will root for a guy that did prison time. Yet what Tell was in for, while bad, we can end up sympathizing with his plight. He was a young soldier that was torturing detainees for information in Abu Ghraib after the 9/11 attacks.
It’s a bit of fun to be introduced to the underground poker world. We see people like Mr. USA, an obnoxious guy that wears more stars and stripes than Evel Knievel or Apollo Creed. There’s a heavy-set Asian that is called Minnesota Fats. It’s funny when La Linda (Haddish) explains the name, and Tell has to explain Fats was a pool player, not a poker player. It also elicits a smile when we find out Mr. USA is actually from the Ukraine.
There’s also Religious Ronnie, and a cowboy that looks like a strung-out Ted Nugent. And if you think Schrader is going to have a showdown at the tables in Vegas for the World Series of Poker...well, yes and no.
Since Tell is a smart guy, he doesn’t make a lot of dumb decisions that would bring this film a more noir vibe into this professional poker world.
Tell ends up taking Cirk through his mid-west trip to various casinos, hoping to shake him from wanting revenge on Major John Gordo (Willem Dafoe), whom he blames for his father’s suicide. While it’s honorable what Tell is trying to do, I just don’t buy his character doing it. And these two never have chemistry, or seem to bond in a way that would make us think that relationship would continue.
Speaking of chemistry, there are supposed to be sparks flying between La Linda and Tell, and that feels forced. There also comes a point midway in, where you just think Tell is a bit too obtuse; so watching him becomes a bit tiresome.
I was reminded of how critics all went nuts over Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight -- his first film. We were introduced to interesting characters, but it never went anywhere. Schrader has been doing this for awhile, so I was expecting more of the brilliance I saw with First Reformed. It’s not enough to just tackle, yet again, the loneliness a person can have (and to have the character constantly writing about it).
Oscar Isaac is certainly the ace in the hole here, but Schrader should’ve folded this hand in the middle of writing the script (I could have done a lot more poker puns, but figured I’d just save those two for the end).
Robert Levon Been did a score that gave us a dark mood that worked well. A handful of scenes are shot nicely (I’m thinking of a neon lit park the couple walks through, and the fisheye lenses used to show the flashbacks at Abu Ghraib with an added intensity).
The best thing about this movie is it reminded me about the great Oscar Isaac short film of last year -- The Letter Room (written/directed by his wife). It was a much more interesting character study, and peek into a likeable person “in prison.” Seek that film out.
This movie gets 2 stars out of 5 (and my wife thinks I’m being generous).