The Card Counter (2021)

Isaac is credibile, Defoe adds nothing, and the rest of the acting plus the story is crap and a waste of time. Tagged as a thriller, but it's mostly a boring ride through a sad, meaningless character study.

Fmovies: A great actor and a great director but fell completely flat.

As always Oscar acted the hell out of this which was its only good attribute. The movie just went nowhere. I'm all for a slow movie but there still has to be something in it worth watching.

Super boring. Misleading title (only 2 min of blackjack in the whole movie). Could have expressed the whole thing in about 30 min. The motivations of the characters were either not clear or non existent. In the top 10 worst movies I've seen.

The Card Counter fmovies. I assumed that having at least one great actor in this film would make it a decent watch. I was wrong.

It doesn't have any cohesion with the characters against the story line which is plain boring.

First we get schooled in card counting and then it takes a strange turn into soldiers undertaking torture which made no sense at all.

I usually like movies that just waste time especially in covid lockdown but I could not wait for this to end.

Isaac is great, Sheridan and Dafoe are good. Haddish is someone out of place here unfortunately. Directionless movies. Well written but goes down in flames on screen. Now if only it going down in flames was exciting... which it isn't.

Whilst the final act is engaging, the journey to get there is slow, at times to the point of tedium. The story takes us from casino to casino, never truly giving a sense of where we'll end up, not really giving us a reason to care.

The dialogue has moments of humanity, but more often than not it felt heavy-handed, as if the film was written by a first-year film student attempting to prove their genius to their peers. Isaac's performance is good, given his main direction was probably along the lines of "don't give away your emotions, but remember that your past hurts." Sheridan is given very little to work with in terms of bringing his character to life, although one scene in particular allows his character a moment of relatability. Haddish brought the most lively performance of the main cast, but her characterization is probably the weakest. Defoe isn't on the screen long enough that his performance would pull the film one way or another.

I'm firmly on the fence about the visual style of the film. There are times where the angles used in conversation highlight the fact that you're hearing dialogue written for a movie, and not experiencing a conversation between people. Additionally, there are many shots that linger for what feels like an eternity, without the emotional weight or stunning beauty that usually demands that kind of visual style, leaving you wondering when the film will be allowed to resume. This includes some of the transitions between scenes.

Finally, the audio in this film has some strange moments, including phasing between mics, varying levels in the dialogue within a scene (if often sounds like switching between two mic positions or different takes), or ADR that doesn't quite match what you're seeing on the screen.

All told, The Card Counter sets out to tell a story of redemption and reckoning with your past. It manages to do so, but isn't particularly compelling along the way.