THE CARD Counter was produced by Martin Scorsese and directed Paul Schrader, the man who wrote Taxi Driver and Raging Bull.
Scharder's last film, First Reformed, about a priest struggling with his faith due to global warming (trust me, it is better than it sounds ) was one of my favourites when released in 2017. In a way, The Card Counter feels like the completion of a trilogy, with Taxi Driver, First Reformed, and now The Card Counter - a trilogy of lonely/broken men.
The film follows William Tell, a card counter who goes from casino to casino cheating the house with one mantra, bet small, win small. He tries not to alert attention to himself and if he does he does not win big enough for it to be worth kicking him out. Oceans 11 this isn’t.
Tell is also suffering from PTSD after an eight year stint in the army as an interrogator. When he runs into the son of his former interrogator friend, also a PDST suffer who recently committed suicide. He takes his son under his wing and they tour casinos. We then find out Tell was an interrogator was Abu Ghraib, the prison camp infamous for its barbaric torture methods.
Oscar Issac as William is just terrific. What a year he is having from Dune, to the TV remake of Scenes From A Marriage, to this. He has often been compared to a young Al Pacino, but at no point in his career so far has it been this obvious. His still and haunted mannerisms reminded me a lot of Micheal in The Godfather pt II and his intensity is right out of Serpico.
The flashbacks to the torture scenes in Iraq might be some of the most disturbing images I have seen on screen, so horrific I would think twice about seeing this if you are slightly squeamish. They are not obscenely explicit like a slasher movie, but are profoundly upsetting in the sense that they are real and just so inhuman. It is a little hard to get your head around.
The film leans very heavily into the misery of the situation in a way we do not often see in modern cinema. You have to admire its commitment, but I do find it hard to recommend a film like this. I felt a bit uncomfortable after it ended and I suppose that was the point.
