The Card Counter

2021's THE CARD COUNTER would've been a far more impressive film if writer/director Paul Schrader hadn't already made it a few times.   In one form or another.   The storyline is also one that is oft told by a variety of filmmakers: older, wiser mentor guides younger, aimless, yet promising upstart.  If you know me by now you'll note that I don't much care about the what.  And everyone knows there are only a hundred or so stories to tell, anyway.  But a strong sense of deja vu really saps the potency out of Schrader's latest, his follow up to the extraordinary (and I don't use that word lightly when discussing contemporary films) FIRST REFORMED.  Right through to (and especially) the closing scene.

The film begins as a man who calls himself William Tell (Oscar Isaac) describes the process of card counting, a skill he honed while spending over eight years in a military prison.  We learn later that he was convicted for his part in the torture of prisoners at Abu Gharib in Iraq.  Tell, whose last name is actually Tillich, suffers nightmares over this but has maintained enough sanity to lead an uneventful life as a barely noticed gambler who travels from casino to casino, never staying in their hotels; he opts for low rent motels where he finds it necessary to wrap the bed and furniture in white sheets with twine.  

We learn that one of Tillich's colleagues at Abu Gharib did not fare so well, committing suicide after his prison stretch.  One night at a casino, the man's son, Cirk (Tye Sheridan), will approach Tillich at a lecture hosted by the one who trained Tillich and his dad in enhanced interrogation - Major John Gordo (Willem Dafoe).   The kid proposes a revenge plot: meting out the same torture and humiliation on Gordo as he had his father do to others.  William refuses, instead offering to take Cirk along the gambling circuit for a sort-of tour.

A bid for redemption.  A chance to save a young man's life, one that will surely end in ruin should he carry out his vengeance.  Much of the film, in a series of solid characterizations, follows the men and William's acquaintance/possible eventual love interest La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), an organizer of investors who put up the money for gamblers on track for the World Series of Poker.   Both Cirk and William have an end goal for this journey, but it may not be the same.  

Isaac is just fascinating to watch.  In every film I've seen him.  He completely embodies the shell of a man called Tell, the latest in a series of Lonely Men in the Schrader filmography.   An insightful, resourceful, content individual who has resigned himself to the comforts of solitude, never betting large at the tables as to not draw attention.  His emerging paternal instincts perhaps surprise him, and he proves to have a soul.  Schrader, a Calvanist, will layer his film with much religious imagery.  As he's done in the past.  It is never less than fascinating.  Penance gets a workout.

There is a scene late in the film that pans away from and never shows us some perhaps unspeakable physical brutality, much as Martin Scorsese (who exec produces here) had done in the Schrader scripted TAXI DRIVER when DeNiro is rejected over the phone and the camera tracks away down a hall.  Two different types of violence, both too much to bear.  Then there's the finale, one of at least three such homages Schrader has done in his films to the great Robert Bresson.  As before, while it again fits within the narrative, it felt derivative.  As if Schrader was ripping himself off.   He also again lands indictments of American jingoism throughout the movie, but this time they are a bit too obvious.

If this is your first Paul Schrader picture, you may be more impressed with it than I was.  It looks and sounds right.  Nice photography by Alexander Dynan and always interesting music by Robert Levon Been, member of the band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club; at various times it reminded me of Rufus Wainwright and Tangerine Dream.