The Card Counter: Disturbing and Brilliant

 

THE CARD COUNTER (2021)

Directed by Paul Schrader

Focus Features, 112 minutes, R (language, nudity, violence, drinking, drugs)

★★★★★

 

 

 

This is a brilliant and stylish film seen by few. It is disturbing and reminiscent of Martin Scorsese’s 1976 masterpiece Taxi Driver. That’s not coincidental; Paul Schrader wrote the screenplay for Taxi Driver and Scorsese is the executive producer for The Card Counter. The latter is also violent and has rough language, nudity, and substance abuse, but that’s not why audiences avoided it. Word got out that it committed a far greater sin by taking down cherished American myths.

 

The first of these is that Americans are global good guys; the second is American soldiers are heroes. Abu Ghraib provides the deep background for a film that is also about games of chance. The odds are much better, though, for William Tell who sees cards, remembers them, and calculates odds with computer-like probability. It’s illegal to count cards in casinos, but Tell knows that the key to avoiding scrutiny is to balance losing a little and only winning modest amounts. Do that repeatedly and you can make a lot of money.

 

Schrader both directly and indirectly blows the cover off another myth. When things go awry, many find it comforting to pretend all is well, but bad people take advantage. In Schrader’s world, we reap what we sow. Once upon a time, the only place one could “cheat” a casino was Las Vegas. Then came Atlantic City and the opening of the floodgates. Tell stays off radar screens by never staying in casino hotels and working casinos from coast to coast. He and others like him aren’t gaming the system; the system created them.

 

How does one learn to count cards? It helps to have a lot of time on your hands and “Tell”–actually William Tillich–spent 8 ½ years in a military prison and came to enjoy its regimen. His crime? He was one of the guards at Abu Ghraib whose faces were caught in photographs. They were the ones who were charged when the shit hit the fan instead of being smeared on Arab bodies. The officers who gave the orders and egged them on got off scot-free. When World War Two ended, numerous lower-ranked Nazis claimed they were just following orders. That didn’t fly, but Tillich/Tell can identify. He was selected by Major John Gordo (Willem Dafoe) to break Abu Ghraib prisoners and became so expert at torture and “enhanced” interrogation that he too was broken and became a monster.

 

Now he is a calm man who lives an aesthetic life and bilks casinos and poker players. Two unexpected individuals come into his life, the first a slacker named Cirk Baufort (Tye Sheridan), who finds Tillich because he served with his father at Abu Ghraib, before becoming a druggie and killing himself. Cirk wants Tell to help him take revenge on Gordo. Till has other ideas, mainly saving Cirk from himself and rescuing him from his rootless lethargy. Till is also spotted by the alluring La Linda (Tiffany Haddish) who knows he’s a card counter. She runs a “stable” that wagers money fronted by wealthy backers who use gamblers as a low-risk way to increase their riches.

 

The Card Counter has been called a “revenge” film, but that’s way too simple. It could just as easily be called a redemption film, or one poised between salvation and perdition. Schrader pulls out lots of Taxi Driver stops: people caught up in things bigger than they, wet streets and lights that dissolve into pixels on steroids, moral ambiguity, the glitter-disguised trappings of seediness, neon piercing nighttime skies, and time fragmented via a mix of torpid scenes and those at time-lapse speed. When Abu Ghraib memories are spliced in, they are made more nightmarish via fisheye lenses and hazy shots that give the illusion they’ve been captured by spy cameras. Schrader also interjects subtle propaganda, like a Ukrainian poker player whose gang chants “USA! USA! USA!” whenever he wins.

 

I won’t try to tell you that The Card Player is anything other than a tough film. I will say, though, that feeling shattered is redemptive if you cogitate upon the moral lessons Schrader is trying to convey. We’d like to believe all broken things can be fixed. Maybe.

 

Rob Weir