Movie Review: ‘The Card Counter’ Proves We Need More Anger From Our Movies
Paul Schrader is offended.
OK, yeah, that’s a bit of like saying “water is moist” whenever you’re speaking concerning the man who started within the Nineteen Seventies because the screenwriter of Taxi Driver and made his directing debut with the gutting Detroit assembly-line drama Blue Collar. However no matter how a lot this will or could not have been true previously, just lately Schrader’s anger feels very private. His 2017 film First Reformed was filled with incendiary fury with a priest confronting his inside struggles whereas additionally awaking to the devastation of our quickly altering local weather. And if his new movie, The Card Counter, goals for one thing a bit much less apocalyptic, its rage is simply as palpable.
Oscar Isaac is our card counter, a person with a hazy previous and an obsessive management of his current, who goes from on line casino to on line casino taking part in blackjack and poker, and who is aware of precisely how far to push the principles with out inflicting issues—casinos don’t care in case you rely playing cards, he says, so long as you don’t win too a lot.
That hazy previous is revealed, although, in a nightmarish sequence that exhibits Isaac to have been an American soldier at Abu Ghraib, as Schrader makes use of what could be the most excessive lens you’ve ever seen to journey by the jail and its horrifyingly acquainted pictures, a type of dynamic Boschian model of that shameful place. And we quickly see that whereas Isaac was not with out his sins, he additionally paid the worth for the individuals above him who laid the groundwork for this torture—and that no less than a kind of individuals could quickly have his personal comeuppance, a possible that jolts Isaac’s hyper-controlled persona.
As occurs with Schrader, this forces Isaac to confront his guilt, the illness in our society, and the prospect of forgiveness, and it opens the story as much as enormous philosophical questions. It’s heady stuff, but it surely’s wrapped in an expertly made thriller that maintains a sluggish, scorching buzz. Schrader’s a director who’ll nonetheless sincerely use a shot of his character driving down a nighttime freeway, with their pensive face superimposed over the shifting automotive, and whereas this kind of factor would possibly really feel outdated in lesser palms, Schrader is aware of how nicely it might create a temper and maintain a quiet crackle.
However nonetheless muted a lot of the movie’s tone could also be, there’s little doubt about Schrader’s boiling anger. He’s fully unafraid of speaking about issues different individuals appear to shrink back from—why are we not all outraged? How is that attainable? Escapism is simply high quality, but it surely’s no secret there’s so much to be offended about nowadays, and our artwork must mirror that. In any other case, we’re simply sticking our heads within the sand. The Card Counter proves: we’d like extra anger from our motion pictures.
The Card Counter is in theaters.
