Review of The Card Counter (2021) by Jluis_001 — 16 Sep 2021

To judge this film in the first instance as a simple poker film, is basically to degrade it.

However, this is an element that Paul Schrader in my opinion cannot balance with the other and much deeper storyline that is part of it.

Putting the cards on the table, The Card Counter is a film that has enough elements to easily stand out, but it's also a film that never seeks to risk anything. Even with the darker tone it gets as it progresses.

Basically we're seeing two very different stories at the same time, that never manage to combine themselves properly.

The two involve the character played by Oscar Issac but they're so different that there are constant drops in terms of tonality and atmosphere.

His character is a lonely man that lives driving from one casino to another, being basically invisible earning a living.

He earns little while risking little.

So far, everything is generic, even the necessary explanation of how he does what he does, because obviously we need the character to let us know his intelligence and to explain to us, because apparently we cannot intuit that he's counting cards.

Until then, that's the life his character leads in his present.

But what about his past and the glaring evidence that he suffers from emotional and psychological trauma? That's the other plot that the film introduces.

It turns out that he's a former military who participated in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

He appeared in the photographs that were taken with the prisoners, and when these were made public, he was one of those who had to pay for the broken dishes of his country's politics, ending up in Leavenworth.

The two stories themselves feel completely alien to each other, and in my opinion I think Paul Schrader never manages to balance them properly. Between the scenes at the card tables and the flashbacks that show glimpses of what happened at Abu Ghraib, there's a clear disconnect in tone.

And the elegant and solid but restrained performance of Oscar Issacs also fails to balance both sides.

And it's inevitable to ask yourself: Am I watching a poker film, or am I watching a political criticism film about torture?

The story leads the character to eventually confront what he clearly seeks to repress by living the way he lives, but Paul Schrader does not make it clean or cathartic, much less emotional.

Perhaps it gives some kind of absolution for the character, and along the way he seems to find something else, but unfortunately for The Card Counter, the message doesn't get across in a more powerful and convincing way.