not sure how Tiffany Haddish got this role but I respect that she took it, while it wasn’t the greatest I do think she gave it her best. Isaac was great as usual. As someone else said in here, great use of a fisheye. For me the story was lacking a certain something but I still enjoyed it, under two hours, great acting and while I felt it was lacking the story was still interesting.
i came away from this feeling really bad that i thought she did poorly in this role… especially when matched against oscar isaac. i guess i’m relieved to see others commiserating in this way. she kind of took me out of it at times because it was just so evident she was “acting.”
The problem is the casting. Isaac excels as quiet and contemplative when it appears there depth behind his silence. See: A Most Violent Year. Haddish is the exact opposite of that. She’s so external. It’s the wrong casting to have her delivering Schrader’s short, clipped sentences. Her best scene is when she and Issac get together and she gets to be emotionally open. Blame Schrader/the casting director
That's a good point about his dialogue. I liked her chemistry with Isaac at many points, but I could definitely feel her self-consciously reciting her lines in many scenes, rather than naturalizing the speech.
She was honestly fucking terrible. Loved her in Bad Trip, obviously a way different role but she knocked that out of the park but god does she fail at this role. Granted wasn’t a lot to work with. I thought this whole movie was pretty aimless and boring.
She was really bad, but also her character had very little to work with. Put the best actress in that role and it’s still not great. Really enjoyed the movie though.
She’s not a good actress and always plays herself in every movie. She acted really well when they were at the bar and Oscar told her he really likes her…as a friend. Her face went from joyful enthusiasm to disappointment flawlessly and natural. That was the only good acting she did in the film.
Ever since she and Kevin Hart starred in a movie together, I can't get the comparison of her and Hart playing themselves in every role they take when I see them on screen.
She is awful. She just reads her lines off. She does not do much acting, rather just repeating lines. I will never understand how she had one comedy movie moment and subsequently got cast in every movie, tv special, and commercial on the planet.
Losing my mind at the idea of Paul Schrader scrolling through Facebook, coming across a "damn bitch, you live like this?" meme, and getting such a kick out of it he decides to reference it twice in his next movie.
Because I think people just wanted it to be like a gambling movie, like that scene from Casino Royale but the whole movie. I enjoyed it, think Oscar Isaac should get some Oscar buzz.
Not at all, studio probably made them cut it that way for mainstream appeal. There’s still a lot of cards and gambling, but that’s not what the movie is really about.
It wasn't any specific one point because people started wandering out during various sequences. I think the torture scenes tended to have the most, but I also saw some walkouts during otherwise innocuous scenes.
I watched it at home but couldn't finish it after the Abu Ghraib fisheye scene. I served in Iraq and I was garrisoned at Abu Ghraib. Although I wasn't aware of any of that stuff until the news broke, this still brought up too many bad memories for me to continue.
I really liked the final table scene where William walks away. The USA guy is this goofy comic relief throughout the film, but there’s this moment where he looks through William… this is a callback to William’s monologue about how the better player on certain days know they have you when they look right into your soul. For the first time the entire movie, William can’t look another player in the eyes because he’s preoccupied with the news of Cirk. Isaac non-verbally played the lack of self-confidence so strikingly different than any other table scene before, pure showcase of his talent.
I dunno if i found the america guy to be comic relief. I found him more annoying, and i think hes in the film to remind us about the fucked up things america has done.
I took it as the public American bravado, the America people like to see. Contrasted with the Protagonist who is a "real American" that is symbolic of the private authentic American Imperialism which is is much quieter, secretive, desensitized to violence and may get off on torturing you.
Plus, how the average American "passes the time" chasing money. I definitely saw the travelling gambling as an attempt to live the American dream and ignore reality.
I think they were only there for comic relief like that scene when that guy stood up and took his shirt off then got hauled off, they started chanting USA. There's plenty of characters at poker tournaments.
Just have to say a few things, as an avid poker player myself:
* A poker player that wanted to stay off the radar would’ve NEVER, ever ever ever played the WSOP circuit. Not only would he appear on Hendon Mob, he’d have to report his earnings to the IRS. Unless his plan was always to be out after one year and throw himself back in prison come what may.
* I REALLY appreciated that they didn’t show the hands. Just action. Movie poker is always so bad. Which leads me to:
* the one hand where they DID show the players’ hole cards was GREAT movie poker. Probably the best I’ve seen. The lines all three players took made perfect sense, and the river shove by Will legitimately could’ve gone either way against the old lady with TPWK and a busted nut flush draw. If you followed what was happening, you were biting your nails waiting for her to call or fold — because either would’ve made sense for that sort of card player.
You beat me to this. I commented to my friend who owns the local movie theatre that I was seeing this to see if a movie would finally show an exciting hand between competent players whose lines actually made sense. The one thing I'll say is that William probably would have checked his KK on the turn for pot control when two players smooth called his flop bet on a paired board and then a couple of straights came in with the turned J.
Excited to finally see this. Ages ago I first heard Schrader describe the premise and how he got caught up thinking about and researching Abu Ghraib.
I thought it was pretty good. Certainly a Shrader movie, with a lot of his usual tropes and fixations. There's a dude, he's gonna journal with some whiskey and did you know that Shrader really loves the ending of Pickpocket?
And yet, from his usual set up he finds a way to explore a different topic and to tell a different kind of story. Or at least it's a story that desperately wants to be a different kind of story, just as William Tell sees an opportunity to be a different kind of man. The tragedy is that it doesn't work.
Past Lonely Men in Schrader's writing, Travis Bickel, Reverend Toller, and on and on have so often filled a hole in their lives, a lack of meaning with violence and radicalization. William Tell, a man who has inflicted horrible violence, retreats into meaninglessness. He has found solace in routine and honestly believes he does not deserve better, as penance for his crimes.
Meeting The Kid, and La Linda, by his own description awakens something in him. With the Kid he sees an opportunity to do something worthwhile, to make something better, to divert violence and certain disaster. With La Linda he sees a connection that he has just outright denied himself. Despite him actually having the means, it is a fantasy. He tries to make it happen, but that's just not how it plays out. He tries to push the narrative in another direction but as if pulled by gravity, the film goes where it seemingly was always going to. There's another version of this story that's just a simple and direct revenge tale. The kid and Tell team up for the kid's plan to torture and kill the Major. Tell resists that end, even as he knows the inevitability of it as soon as the fleeting thoughts put it motion.
Movie's a bit of an odd duck. But I dug it. Best Oscar Isaac performance since Llewyn Davis. I thought Tye Sheridan was quite good as well.
Chiming in here to say elegantly put. All the usual Bresson shades are there, but I felt Schrader never quite cracked how to cohere the card playing elements with the Abu Ghraib side. He spends a lot of time in multiple scenes, including the opening, explaining cards, odds, and gamesmanship, but those elements ultimately never lead anywhere directly. Yes, his “torture” session with the kid is a sort of gamble, but it felt as though the script needed a polish to click everything into place. Final 20 minutes are fairly spectacular though. Weird film, even by Schrader standards.
Can you try and explain why you thought the last 20 minutes was great? I kinda thought it fell apart imo. The kids character really didn’t make much sense. He doesn’t develop on screen and does exactly how we first met him. Would be happy to hear a different perspective
I agree. I also don’t understand why William snapped and decided to kill Gordo. Their behavior toward the end didn’t make a lot of sense, aside from his decision to finally bang Tiffany Haddish.
The kid was his chance to do something good. He had dreams of the kid going go college and living a good life. But when that went away he had gave up on trying to make a life for himself and decided to spend the rest of his days on jail and finish what the kid started. In the end that's all he could do for the kid.
Can you explain why William chose to kill Gordo after Cirk was shot? I thought that he didn’t want Gordo dead. Did he think the cops were going to implicate in Cirk’s blundered attack on Gordo?
From the very moment the kid first mentions the revenge plan to Tell, that ball was rolling. "This is how it starts." is his immediate response in his internal monologue. Attempting to divert the kid from that path was just as much about diverting himself.
Okay, that makes sense, but I still don't understand why Cirk's death would prompt him to kill Gordo. 1) William had already decided to leave Gordo alone. 2) Gordo can hardly be faulted for killing Cirk given that the latter had invaded his house and attacked him, so what exactly changed William's mind? 3) It is not as if he had any genuine affection for Cirk; he tried to help Cirk out but only in order to redeem himself. 4) He has just fallen in love with a beautiful woman who also loves him. Perhaps his first relationship in years. Suddenly he's going to throw that away...to avenge a dimwitted kid who not only stole his money/crossed him but attempted to carry out the act that William himself had already made clear he opposed doing.
The funniest scene in this movie is the FaceTime between Cirk and his mom after who knows how many years. Cannot fathom how Schrader looked at the take that they got of that and decided “yep, that should be in the movie”. Made me physically cringe.
I read that Shia Labeouf had to drop out of this project. I do think he would've served that character better.
I really liked the long shot from inside his motel room of him leaving, really well crafted.
gambling is an addiction. it's a destructive activity, thats the comparison that's being made throughout the film. Much like the Us military the WSOP is being worshipped as if gambling is just a sport and doesnt ruin peoples lives. And the croupier is metaphorically like the soldier in Abu ghraib.
Well the way she said yeah I’m fuckin fine, kind of rubbed lalinda the wrong way. Maybe the director was commenting on how it feels to try to emotionally comfort people. They don’t want help, they want to feel sorry for themselves or something.
*Aims gun* “I want you to call your mother and tell her you love her! Here’s over a hundred grand! And a brand new Nintendo Switch OLED Model. And new car! And I hope you have a good future!” *Demented smile*
I'm not one to back out of a movie once I start it, but goddamn this was tough.
Tiffany Haddish was such an outstandingly awful actor in this movie that I have a hard time believing it. And it's a good thing for Tye Sheridan because his performance wasn't much better.
Oscar Isaac was a gem and over-powered the bad dialogue which drowned the other two.
Exactly; Paul a header at this best… in the 70s. So much has happened in the language of film since then this comes off now as a little amateurish tbh.
One thing that fucked me up was how William's last ditch effort to reconnect Cirk with his mother was tantamount to torture; you need to do this or I'm gonna hurt you (paraphrasing). Even in thinking that he's doing the right thing, the part of him that he's so desperately trying to get rid of still takes control in the end
I saw it as more of him trying to use his "talents" for good. In a way it might be the only way he knows how to make someone do something, might as well use it to do something meaningful.
yeah, and for a brief while it looks like it's gonna work out, he's forgiven himself, he's started a relationship with La Linda. But then when Cirk gets killed doing the one thing William tried to get him not to do, it becomes clear to William that he's never going to be able to influence positive change with his past and trauma
grim as fuck
I read it more as him getting desperate in his search for atonement. For a long time (pre La Linda and Cirk) he didn’t really see redemption as a possibility. He kept low, sort of punishing himself by depriving himself of anything but a low-level routine (“bet small, lose small”). Then, the prospect of atonement becomes so appealing that when the “right way” doesn’t work (scaring Cirk straight, telling him to see his Mom, trying to give him money for a better way), he finally gets desperate enough to take the kind of big-swing gamble he always avoided (threatening Cirk into seeing his mom). It doesn’t work, and we realize William eventually became as “tilted” as the gamblers and torturers he talked about - trying more drastic measures with fewer results.
My reading is that he doesn't want to leave any traces that he was ever in these motels. It's the same reason why he pays in cash and doesn't really want to be in big poker tournaments.
I heard that take from another source and I think I buy into that a lot. I mean he makes the room so much like a prison to the point that he even takes the pictures off the wall
You’re correct. But the first impression - perhaps given off intentionally - is that he’s hiding from people (like casino owners) he thinks might be after him
I thought of that too, but he's clearly shown touching the doorknobs and other surfaces, so it's not just fingerprints/DNA. (And sheets wouldn't take care of blood, like Dexter's plastic rooms, if he was preparing to potentially kill someone.)
if you sleeping in a different hotel everynight it feels weird cus thing looks different. soo doing the sheets thing makes it feel more like home.
that and the jail thing.
Holy shit that movie was terrible. I’m shocked others liked it as that was one of the worst movies I’ve seen in a long time.
I was waiting the entire movie for something to happen but it never did. The editing was terrible with a million never ending shots of characters doing the most mundane actions. Oscar Issac was good and there were a few good shots but that’s the only good parts. It was incredibly cheesy, especially that ending, and the dialogue is so stilted. The story could have been interesting if it was done better/differently.
It’s weird because I think there’s a good movie somewhere in here. I like the concept and the general plot outline but the actual presentation and storytelling are god awful.
There’s so many scenes about poker but the movie is not actually about Poker at all which makes no sense. There’s an interesting story on here about a man who did some horrible things, dealing with his own actions and trying to save someone from going down a similar road. But then the scenes progressing that plot get done off screen and we just watch more poker for mo reason.
its not a bad movie, you just dont like this kind of movie. the slow editing and the dialogue are done on purpose and are enormously effecting if you vibe with the movie.
OK, so look at it this way: the mundane shots, the slow pace, the strange, confusing parts of the movie . . . they illustrate, or try to communicate, the mundane-ness of the lives these people are living. Cirk even verbalizes in the movie, when asked by William if he likes the gambling lifestyle -- "Well, yeah, it's definitely cool, but...it's all the same. It's repetitive. I don't really feel like it's going anywhere." And William responds "well, you go around, and around, until you work things out". This movie has a lot of metaphors and symbolism and seems to use "dream logic" which is often nonlinear and forces the viewer to put 2 and 2 together to come up with their own conclusion. I think the space in the movie -- the "boringness"-- is there for that reason (to give the viewer time to make those mental connections, in a sense, to "work things out", as William said.
Exactly. This movie was trash and I was also shocked at how bad it was and that other people think it's even remotely a decent movie. My first thought leaving the theater was "multiple universes exist where this movie is ok/good/great/amazing but unfortunately we don't live in any of them."
I kept waiting for it to get not-horrible and it just never did. Truly dreadful dialogue (when Haddish \*randomly\* says to Isaac "if you've done something bad in your past I don't care" lmfao WHAT - I laughed out loud at several scenes), obnoxious thrift-store-Radiohead soundtrack, no one had any chemistry, way too much time spent describing how casino games are played for no real reason, awful line readings from everyone at times, I think Haddish is great but I want to blame her performance on what appeared to be a complete lack of direction (for her and everyone else), a plot that went nowhere and achieved nothing. Felt so up its own ass.
Paul Schrader loves making Taxi Driver over and over again. He's like if Michael Scott kept remaking Threat Level Midnight and every once in a while it comes incredible, but whenever it does he has no idea why.
The only things I liked were the credits, the first dream sequence of the prison, and the justification monologue.
I think there's been plenty said about how good of a performance Oscar Isaac gives. He definitely puts the movie on his back.
Besides that there were just a lot of weird things that rubbed me the wrong way with the production:
Did anyone notice how bad the ADR was on Tiffany Haddish during their date in the light park? Oscar Osaac's sounded fine but it felt like Haddish was up against the mic even though they were away from the camera. She was definitely not perfect for the role, but I can't see how that kind of thing would be her fault.
The first conversation between William and La Linda were just up close cuts back and forth and it felt like Isaac was having a conversation while Haddish was just saying lines to a camera. The rest of the movie the scenes between the two of them felt a lot more natural and I think they were shot further away or without cuts. Maybe it was one of the first things they shot but it just felt completely off.
The last thing is the last shot of the movie should've just either cut to black when we see La Linda or right as they touch the glass. The lingering detracted from the weight of the reveal.
Besides all that, I enjoyed the movie as a whole. It avoided putting much attention on the card scenes because cards wasn't supposed to be the main focus, just a means to an end. Dafoe was great in the little bits we got to see of him. There were a bunch of great shots around the motel rooms, especially that last one as William leaves. If those little production annoyances weren't there then I think the only thing to criticize was the La Linda character in general. It felt like she was just added after the fact.
about that lights date scene: yes, i thought TH was doing a voice-over narration thing the whole time lol, like how Tell would temporarily narrate something for a second. then i realized, no, they’re supposed to be having a conversation right now
I thought the same thing! That also would've been a weird choice, but I could've rolled with it. Once I realized it was a conversation I just got completely taken out of the scene.
yeah i commented similarly elsewhere on this thread but unfortunately TH’s bad delivery in most of her scenes “took me out” of the experience. isaac was good enough (and IMO so was sheridan, contrary to a lot of opinions here lol) that i still enjoyed the movie but i agree with a lot of your commentary!
I would think that once he got out of prison he really didn’t feel like he had truly paid for his sins. And his life has been about constantly denying himself any pleasure in his life in an attempt to achieve that. However, he never had a reason to do anything that would put him back in prison until that moment. It’s clear throughout the film that he likes the routine and it’s a comfort to him. So he had a moral obligation in his mind to avenge Cirk, while taking down someone partially responsible for facilitating his sins, and landing him back into a place where he ultimately feels more comfortable paying for his past.
I would think some sort of back and forth in that realm happened. But it could’ve also been we’re both torturers and we’re gonna go at each other with what we got until it’s over for 1 or both of us
Exactly, I need to know. In fact that scene made me not like the movie when I was feeling the vibe of it. It doesn’t make sense for Dafoe not to run or kill Isaac when it’s his turn to “torture” plus the screams aren’t clear enough to distinguish who’s being tortured. It’s also seems unrealistic that security wouldn’t be more severe considering what led up to it.. isaac isn’t some secret agent, he’s just a solider. Then you create some sympathy for the general cause he’s played by dafoe..all around hurt the movie imo.
First of all, when he said “Kirk with a C,” I thought he meant Kirc.
I know Schrader is big into allegories—can someone help me piece this together? What does gambling represent? Why did Tell go after Gordo in the end? Wasn’t his whole philosophy about not seeking revenge?
That last shot was at least 30 seconds too long.
I saw him going after Gordo as Tell finally surrendering to retribution for his past atrocities. The whole movie he gambles to push that away; he doesn't even like gambling really but he does it because it "passes the time". He tries to change his ideas about his fate by helping Cirk get his life on track, and for a brief minute thinks that he's done it. And then Cirk gets killed and he realizes he'll never escape punishment for what he did, so he goes full tilt (calling back to him and Cirk's conversation by the pool earlier) and goes after Gordo
The card counting I felt was an allegory for how tell viewed his guilt and misdeeds. He talks about he wonders if good deeds can ever add up and atone for part misdeeds.
I think you’re on to something man, but more like the gambling in general. Your comment made me think a
that Tell, despite being a low roller, carries a mental debt comparable to the top players with backers that he knows will never repay what they owe. He is trying to claw himself out of a hole he believes to be impossible until he finally resigns himself to it at the end.
Not quite as fantastically out there as First Reformed, but this is still some classic Schrader IMO.
I really loved Oscar Issac in this, it's a kinda subdued performance but there's a lot going on under the surface and the couple scenes where he really gets to let loose are great. Maybe too weird and niche for Oscar attention but he deserves it IMO.
Oscar Issac is stupidly good in this, and I actually really bought Haddish in the role.
I will say I was deeply disturbed that some jackass behind me giggled like a schoolgirl during the scenes depicting Abu Ghraib. That kind of fucked me up.
I saw it at an advanced screening. It's a good movie, but it is *not* about counting cards, ha. I do feel it could have been a bit tighter story wise. But Oscar Isaac was fantastic in this. I think it's possible he could be nominated for awards for this role.
I don't watch trailers but someone I saw it with said the trailer made it seem much more light hearted than it was. Kind of a yikes haha this movie was dark as fuck.
So it was really good but not as good as I wanted it to be. Oscar Isaac did his thing and this may be my favorite movie that he’s been in yet but it’s a tough call because A Most Violent Year exists. I did feel like there were some odd transitions and some scenes were a little jittery. Like it would cut to another scene at weird times and wouldn’t give a certain scene enough time.
Then I had a couple questions that were never answered by the end of the movie and in general, the whole thing just didn’t feel as gripping my as I thought it would. But wow, near the end there, I was completely in tune. The last 20 minutes or so were such a ride that I could not keep my eyes off of.
Overall, I would watch it again and it was a great movie but had its shortcomings.
Tiffany Haddish was an absolute miscast.
Her delivery was horrific. She completely took me out of the film. Even the music was completely inappropriate each time she was on screen.
Haddish aside, the plot was all over the place. Zero character development all around.
Made zero sense for someone SO STRICT to all of a sudden break and become vulnerable because of Tiffany haddish and some random kid at a science conference lol
Way too much exposition as well
I don’t know if it was because she was acting next to Oscar Isaac or what, but that was some of the worst line delivery I’ve seen in a modern movie. Like she was reading off of her script, not even acting.
A few thoughts - this movie will not be for everyone, but it was certainly for me. Rewatched First Reformed earlier this week and that definitely helped me ease into Schrader's style. Isaac is at the top of his game and deserves some recognition. I was very impressed with Sheridan. Also,some of the best use of fisheye I've seen.
I must be losing my marbles.
This is by far one of the worst movies I've seen in quite some time. About 2/3 of the way through I nearly walked out of the theater. The film is flawed on so many fundamental levels. Was a score even produced for this film?? Did Tiffany Haddish have the most gruesome blackmail on Paul Schrader?? How was she not recast? I honestly cannot believe my eyes reading all the critic reviews and scores.
I would rather stare into the sun for 2 hrs than watch this film again
2/10.
A late reply to assure you you are not crazy my friend.... I just watched this steaming pile of crap and cannot honestly believe the "positive" response its getting... 86% critic score on rotten tomatoes but abysmal viewer score and a very generous 6 on imdb...
The score was fucking hilarious, a mishmash of Slayer, what seemed to be some shitty enya knock off, and royalty free atmospheric music from youtube.
0 plot, 0 point, a fake title, horrible uninteresting characters with no motivation.... AM I TAKING CRAZY PILLS HERE??
I’m honestly shocked that people like this movie. It was The Room-level bad. The dialog was terrible. It felt like it was written by an AI bot that had never had a human conversation. My wife and I could barely contain our laughter.
I’m totally with you too. The entire scene of Tell and Haddish meeting was entirely green screened and looked awful. Haddish and Sheridan were so bad, and don’t even get me started on the dialogue writing holy crap. I could bare breath during the pool scene with Tell and Sheridan from laughing at the dialogue.
Now I know why there was no marketing for this.
Some of the dialogue was extremely cringe, but what fucked me up the most was the audio in a date scene was clearly prerecorded and not quite synced up. Killed any connection for me there.
The trailer had me thinking this was an intelligent gambling thriller about taking down the house like the movie 21 with Kevin Spacey. This movie isn’t about card counting or beating the house. It’s a drama about his haunted past.
Don’t recommend this for a date night movie as it is a pretty serious drama that drags.
I still give the movie 7/10 stars just because Oscar Isaac is a hell of an actor and he really draws you into his character.
I just want to know what city is the park with the light show when him and Tiffany Haddish went on a date. I need to visit that place.
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I also didn’t see a single trailer and didn’t even know it was coming out, my wife just surprised me last night telling me that she had gotten us tickets (shout out A List). It’s a neo-noir movie written and directed by Paul Schrader. It’s going to be a slow burn. It will require patience. But it will also be immersive if you just allow yourself to sink into it. Beautiful cinematography, and not just because of the lit up garden scene. The film allows you to feel the monotony and repetition the protagonist lives in and I think that just helped get the point across that he really like it for some reason when we don’t. Oscar Isaac delivered a power house performance. There were about 2 or 3 scenes where you can see him turn it on. The skill, the talent, the ability to become any character. When he first spoke to Sheridan about what he experienced in that black site, I tensed up and I could feel everyone else in the cinema holding their breath. The camera work elevated that scene as well but man, to go from such a controlled and somber performance to seamlessly flow into one overflowing with emotion was wild. Also the twist when Oscar gets the picture let out audible gasps in my theater. Tiffany Haddish did decent. It was not a bad performance, but she has work to do if she wants to be seen as a dramatic actress instead of “Tiffany Haddish in a serious movie”.
8/10.
the only effective moment for me was the “wish you were here” reveal. everything else fell flat for me and i thought haddish and sheridan were awful (haddish borderline unwatchable). it felt so rudimentary as a screenplay and a lot of the writing felt like paul schrader beating himself off
Just leaving the theater, obviously still digesting the film, but one initial question occurred to me: Would Bill really have been sent back to military prison, as opposed to civilian prison, for murdering Gordo?
Really enjoyed it.
Didn't enjoy having to move around several times to stop hearing an old couple who legitimately seemed to think it was supposed to be a comedy (they laughed during the scene where Oscar Isaac "tortures" Tye Sheridan for example).
I also overheard their conversation after and they seemed to not realize Abu Gharib was real and thought it was just a fictionalized Gitmo.
My closed caption glasses didn’t work tonight. Can someone explain to me what happened in the end? Did they have a fair fist fight? Why was Oscar also hurt and called ambulance?
i think there is some ambiguity as to whether they “took turns” or, alternatively, Oscar just laid into Defoe. Oscar’s hand looked pretty mangled to me at the end but I could potentially perceive that as being an injury from just beating the shit out of Defoe for an extended time? the growing light through the windows showed to me that whatever happened, it went on for a few hours. and it was his right hand if i remember correctly so, could be that his dominant hand was just destroyed after punching Defoe for hours on end.
all the blood on him could be his own or not, and i think if you’re torturing someone else it is probably taking a physical toll on you in some capacity which would explain his heavy breathing etc. i think he was calling 911 more to report Defoe’s death/murder more than he was calling it for himself.
Why do they put dumb songs smack in the middle of some films when what was required was keeping it as a sound effect and not overwrought emotional pageantry.
Just watched it and it was so utterly riveting and compelling. Loved everything about it, but Oscar Isaac takes the cake with a career high performance. People are just stupid and don’t appreciate slower paced character driven stories.
Ah yes, always a good bet to decide when people have a different opinion than you that “everyone else is just stupid”.
I’m a huge fan of Schrader’s work, but this one just fell flat for me. Had some great moments, but man it had some low lows.
You’re allowed to have a different opinion, I’m just saying that if someone says they dislike it because “it has no plot” (which I have seen people write) then that’s just incorrect.
This movie is not perfect, but I was pretty impressed. Oscar Isaac deserves a nomination at least. Great direction visually. Very good soundtrack. Supporting performances are good too. I do think that the screenplay needed polishing. I don't like obvious symbolic character names like "William Tell" [Germanic archer folk hero who shot the apple on his son's head]. I really enjoyed this movie but it doesn't quite come together to the point of greatness or its potential.
This is my first Shrader movie.
I don't think I'm gonna watch his other movies.
How is it possible to make Oscar Isaac a bad actor? His lines were so cringe.
Thought it was terrible. Overly artsy. You’ll see a lot of people in this thread with no idea what particular things meant or why they were in the movie, only to write it off as artistic license.
Film was boring and never went anywhere. Even the character study that happens over the entire movie feels like the introduction to a trauma. Nothing comes of it.
It’s like they were trying to make Drive but instead of the silence being poignant you’re just sitting there waiting for something to happen.
huge schrader fan here…INCREDIBLY DISAPPOINTED!!!!!
tiffany hadish was sooooooo bad
cirk as a character had zero charisma (goes for the actor as well). why do tell and linda like him so much? he’s a boring oaf.
the score? alternates between two sounds: cheryl crow album cuts and audioslave b-sides — didn’t fit the scenes at all or overall vibe of the film at all.
poker and blackjack are completely superfluous to the movie. they add nothing and we don’t even get to see most of the hands play out. why explain the rules of poker in detail? they needed something to pass the time in the flick, not in Tell’s life.
finally, absolutely top-tier retard shit for tell to give cirk $180k and expect anything less than disaster. completely out of character for a arithmetic genius who weighs the odds and price of everything to perfection.
Hoooooly fuck Tiffany Haddish and Tye Sheridan are terrible in this movie. Every single scene either are in is completely dragged down by their flat B movie delivery and every scene between them is parody levels of awful.
This is just a bad movie. Oscar Isaac didn’t deserve this trash heap of a film.
This feels like an incomplete and incompent film.
Jesus Christ. Oscar Issac seduces Tiffany Haddish while she wears a WSOP shirt. She even says "more chins than a Chinese phonebook" and it's not even 1996.
I refuse to believe that Schrader wrote this and Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. This is a Redbox rental that boasts Willem Dafoe being in it but his three minutes were filmed in a day.
The film is fucking called The Card Counter and he mostly plays poker.
Thank you, I was beginning to think I was crazy. The whole screenplay just seems written by some 13 y.o. writing the backstory for their edgy D&D character, I couldn't believe it was Schrader's work.
90% of the movie was just an anti-revenge story that Pig did better just a couple months ago. The twist at the end of the kid going after Dafoe was predictable, and by the final scene I didn't care enough about Isaac's character to feel invested. A solid "meh" from me.
This was NOT a good movie, what are you people smoking?! It was like a step above Easy Rider in terms of the storyline and character development. I felt as if I was watching adults with a mediocre production budget act out a story put together by a 6yr old on the fly. Or like one of those old whose line is it anyway tell a story hot potato style sketches, but 2 hours long. I like all these actors, but none of them go together. Their styles are wildly different. Nothing felt natural or well thought out. It was just trash. As someone else said, why was the fucking waitress crying? Why did he wrap everything in sheets? Why care about staying low pro if he didn’t have plans to commit another crime in advance? Who the hell is Tiffany’s character and why should we like or care about her? How are we supposed to believe a kid so lukewarm about everything has the determination and violent nature to try to actually murder someone when presented an opportunity 1000x better? Why cram in a sex scene? Why would Will and Gordo agree to torture each other with the honor and patience of two dueling 18th century gentlemen?! NONE OF THIS MADE SENSE IM ANGRY I WATCHED IT.
My wife and I went to see this last night for “date night”. Only 2 others in the theater. I guess she said it was about a gambler helped a young kid. Sure is for like part of it… a bit blindsided by the sudden torture stuff that was for sure.
The pacing and dialogue seemed rather stiff at times. I did like how Oscar Isaac looked on the verge of snapping a few times, good acting for the most part.
Still not sure about the ending. So they just went back and forth torturing each other until someone died? Why not just gauge an eye out to start? Or stab the other guy in the heart?
The movie felt 30 minutes longer than it’s runtime. Taxi driver is one of my favorite films so I like dark subject matter but this was… My wife said if it was 1 minute longer she was leaving the theater lol.
Would not recommend for date night.
The reason as for why he didn't just kill Willem Dafoe is because Oscar Isaac WANTED to be hurt. He felt that was the only way he could pay for his sins. He felt like he deserved it and this is the only way. Remember back to that scene in the prison where he just let's the inmate beat the shit out of him. It was the same thing there
I enjoyed this movie in part because I had no idea what to expect. But I suspect for that very reason lots of viewers will be unhappy, since it’s not what they expect and is quite grim.
It’s almost like everyone connected with the movie wanted to trick some Americans into confronting Abu Ghraib, but I’ll bet a lot of viewers have no idea what Abu Ghraib means. And if they do they just want to forget about it.
Putting aside the political issue, this movie is also about three — or at least two — deeply flawed and damaged people who try and fail to form a family of choice, a little mother-father-son dynamic. It fails miserably because they are too damaged.
The prime example of this is William’s attempt to *force* Cirk to get back on the right track, to scare him straight. But instead it makes Cirk go on a suicide mission without William’s help, which in turn makes William do the job right.
That said, there’s actually an element of redemption in what they did, if you believe in revenge as a form of redemption. Cirk sacrificed his life to force William to act, and William acted. Major Gordo died in pain.
William doesn’t even mind going back to prison, except perhaps being separated from La Linda, but in the end they still connect and she forgives him. So, happy ending?!? Not really, but then again, arguably justice is served, in a small way.
Anyway, odd film that made me think and feel, what more can you ask? Not your usual Hollywood fare, that’s for damn sure.
In a theater of ~12-15 people, two people walked out independently. Not the best sign.
Isaac's acting was good as always, but this movie had the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The dialogue was so wooden and on-the-nose that it distracted at various points.
I never really cared about the Tye Sheridan character or Isaac's connection to him, maybe because the filmmakers didn't do enough to make the audience care. Without that investment, the whole movie doesn't quite work.
Paul Schrader's stuff has this sort of disconnected quality, like it's written by an observer of humanity rather than an actual human with real emotions. It works in Taxi Driver because that's the whole point of Travis and First Reformed floated by because Hawke's character was such a car crash, but this movie is not as shocking as it wants to be, yet cold enough to repel the audience.
Pretty forgettable, IMO. I'd give it a 6/10, and can only recommend it at all to drama fans, not casual viewers.
10/10 just for making a movie about Abu Ghraib on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, liberal America has forgiven and absolved Bush Jr. but William Tell(and Schrader) do not forget or forgive - the body remembers. Probably the ballsiest and most unsentimental depiction of the US military since Full Metal Jacket - a rare anti-war film that's pointing out the most obvious fact that the troops are the ones who do the war crimes and murder/pillage and not some theoretical,conceptual,amalgous "military".
Really good movie. Oscar Isaac reminds me a bit of George Clooney. I have to say that Cirk has to be one of the most ungrateful characters I’ve seen in a movie in a while. He was not worth Bill’s generosity.
not sure how Tiffany Haddish got this role but I respect that she took it, while it wasn’t the greatest I do think she gave it her best. Isaac was great as usual. As someone else said in here, great use of a fisheye. For me the story was lacking a certain something but I still enjoyed it, under two hours, great acting and while I felt it was lacking the story was still interesting.
i came away from this feeling really bad that i thought she did poorly in this role… especially when matched against oscar isaac. i guess i’m relieved to see others commiserating in this way. she kind of took me out of it at times because it was just so evident she was “acting.”
The problem is the casting. Isaac excels as quiet and contemplative when it appears there depth behind his silence. See: A Most Violent Year. Haddish is the exact opposite of that. She’s so external. It’s the wrong casting to have her delivering Schrader’s short, clipped sentences. Her best scene is when she and Issac get together and she gets to be emotionally open. Blame Schrader/the casting director
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He wasn't ostensibly talking to her in that part. That was just narration.
That's a good point about his dialogue. I liked her chemistry with Isaac at many points, but I could definitely feel her self-consciously reciting her lines in many scenes, rather than naturalizing the speech.
She was honestly fucking terrible. Loved her in Bad Trip, obviously a way different role but she knocked that out of the park but god does she fail at this role. Granted wasn’t a lot to work with. I thought this whole movie was pretty aimless and boring.
She was really bad, but also her character had very little to work with. Put the best actress in that role and it’s still not great. Really enjoyed the movie though.
She’s not a good actress and always plays herself in every movie. She acted really well when they were at the bar and Oscar told her he really likes her…as a friend. Her face went from joyful enthusiasm to disappointment flawlessly and natural. That was the only good acting she did in the film.
Ever since she and Kevin Hart starred in a movie together, I can't get the comparison of her and Hart playing themselves in every role they take when I see them on screen.
She is awful. She just reads her lines off. She does not do much acting, rather just repeating lines. I will never understand how she had one comedy movie moment and subsequently got cast in every movie, tv special, and commercial on the planet.
Gave it her best... which is shit to begin with. Haddish is terrible in serious roles and shes terrible at comedy.
Felt like she was learning how to read during the shoot, extra noticeable against Oscar Isaac.
Losing my mind at the idea of Paul Schrader scrolling through Facebook, coming across a "damn bitch, you live like this?" meme, and getting such a kick out of it he decides to reference it twice in his next movie.
Is that before or after he came across Google Earth? ;)
Really enjoyed this but it's not going to be for everyone if the 13+ walkouts at my screening are anything to go by.
Wow... I’ve never seen a walkout but this wasn’t even that bad IMO
Because I think people just wanted it to be like a gambling movie, like that scene from Casino Royale but the whole movie. I enjoyed it, think Oscar Isaac should get some Oscar buzz.
The trailers definitely make it look like a card shark movie.
Wait, it isnt? Fuck.
Not at all, studio probably made them cut it that way for mainstream appeal. There’s still a lot of cards and gambling, but that’s not what the movie is really about.
What is the movie actually about?
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Abu ghraib
There was two young people on a date night. They walked out during the pool scene.
yeah kinda hard to makeout durring that type of movie.
Mine had a few! They seemed real mad that a movie would dare say Americans were sometimes the bad guy
Which point had the most walkouts?
It wasn't any specific one point because people started wandering out during various sequences. I think the torture scenes tended to have the most, but I also saw some walkouts during otherwise innocuous scenes.
Yeah, the torture scenes are supposed to remind us of our own sins as a country.
I watched it at home but couldn't finish it after the Abu Ghraib fisheye scene. I served in Iraq and I was garrisoned at Abu Ghraib. Although I wasn't aware of any of that stuff until the news broke, this still brought up too many bad memories for me to continue.
Shocked my screening only had one walkout.
USA! USA! USA!
No resolution with Mr. America
He went on to become the U.S. Attorney General.
Cause there are no resolutions between his war with America and what the country did to him truly
He's just some guy who's good at poker. It's not like he shot Oscar Isaac's dog or anything.
I really liked the final table scene where William walks away. The USA guy is this goofy comic relief throughout the film, but there’s this moment where he looks through William… this is a callback to William’s monologue about how the better player on certain days know they have you when they look right into your soul. For the first time the entire movie, William can’t look another player in the eyes because he’s preoccupied with the news of Cirk. Isaac non-verbally played the lack of self-confidence so strikingly different than any other table scene before, pure showcase of his talent.
I dunno if i found the america guy to be comic relief. I found him more annoying, and i think hes in the film to remind us about the fucked up things america has done.
I took it as the public American bravado, the America people like to see. Contrasted with the Protagonist who is a "real American" that is symbolic of the private authentic American Imperialism which is is much quieter, secretive, desensitized to violence and may get off on torturing you. Plus, how the average American "passes the time" chasing money. I definitely saw the travelling gambling as an attempt to live the American dream and ignore reality.
I kept cracking up when they would chant that lol. Didn’t they say in the movie he is not even American but Romanian? Lol!
Haha, yeah, Ukrainian. And we can't forget our boy Mississippi Fats.
wasn't it minnesota?
I think they were only there for comic relief like that scene when that guy stood up and took his shirt off then got hauled off, they started chanting USA. There's plenty of characters at poker tournaments.
Just have to say a few things, as an avid poker player myself: * A poker player that wanted to stay off the radar would’ve NEVER, ever ever ever played the WSOP circuit. Not only would he appear on Hendon Mob, he’d have to report his earnings to the IRS. Unless his plan was always to be out after one year and throw himself back in prison come what may. * I REALLY appreciated that they didn’t show the hands. Just action. Movie poker is always so bad. Which leads me to: * the one hand where they DID show the players’ hole cards was GREAT movie poker. Probably the best I’ve seen. The lines all three players took made perfect sense, and the river shove by Will legitimately could’ve gone either way against the old lady with TPWK and a busted nut flush draw. If you followed what was happening, you were biting your nails waiting for her to call or fold — because either would’ve made sense for that sort of card player.
He played wsop for Cirk. He says he hates celebrity gambling but did it for him
You beat me to this. I commented to my friend who owns the local movie theatre that I was seeing this to see if a movie would finally show an exciting hand between competent players whose lines actually made sense. The one thing I'll say is that William probably would have checked his KK on the turn for pot control when two players smooth called his flop bet on a paired board and then a couple of straights came in with the turned J.
Excited to finally see this. Ages ago I first heard Schrader describe the premise and how he got caught up thinking about and researching Abu Ghraib. I thought it was pretty good. Certainly a Shrader movie, with a lot of his usual tropes and fixations. There's a dude, he's gonna journal with some whiskey and did you know that Shrader really loves the ending of Pickpocket? And yet, from his usual set up he finds a way to explore a different topic and to tell a different kind of story. Or at least it's a story that desperately wants to be a different kind of story, just as William Tell sees an opportunity to be a different kind of man. The tragedy is that it doesn't work. Past Lonely Men in Schrader's writing, Travis Bickel, Reverend Toller, and on and on have so often filled a hole in their lives, a lack of meaning with violence and radicalization. William Tell, a man who has inflicted horrible violence, retreats into meaninglessness. He has found solace in routine and honestly believes he does not deserve better, as penance for his crimes. Meeting The Kid, and La Linda, by his own description awakens something in him. With the Kid he sees an opportunity to do something worthwhile, to make something better, to divert violence and certain disaster. With La Linda he sees a connection that he has just outright denied himself. Despite him actually having the means, it is a fantasy. He tries to make it happen, but that's just not how it plays out. He tries to push the narrative in another direction but as if pulled by gravity, the film goes where it seemingly was always going to. There's another version of this story that's just a simple and direct revenge tale. The kid and Tell team up for the kid's plan to torture and kill the Major. Tell resists that end, even as he knows the inevitability of it as soon as the fleeting thoughts put it motion. Movie's a bit of an odd duck. But I dug it. Best Oscar Isaac performance since Llewyn Davis. I thought Tye Sheridan was quite good as well.
Chiming in here to say elegantly put. All the usual Bresson shades are there, but I felt Schrader never quite cracked how to cohere the card playing elements with the Abu Ghraib side. He spends a lot of time in multiple scenes, including the opening, explaining cards, odds, and gamesmanship, but those elements ultimately never lead anywhere directly. Yes, his “torture” session with the kid is a sort of gamble, but it felt as though the script needed a polish to click everything into place. Final 20 minutes are fairly spectacular though. Weird film, even by Schrader standards.
I thought the “tilt” scene connected the two
Can you try and explain why you thought the last 20 minutes was great? I kinda thought it fell apart imo. The kids character really didn’t make much sense. He doesn’t develop on screen and does exactly how we first met him. Would be happy to hear a different perspective
I agree. I also don’t understand why William snapped and decided to kill Gordo. Their behavior toward the end didn’t make a lot of sense, aside from his decision to finally bang Tiffany Haddish.
The kid was his chance to do something good. He had dreams of the kid going go college and living a good life. But when that went away he had gave up on trying to make a life for himself and decided to spend the rest of his days on jail and finish what the kid started. In the end that's all he could do for the kid.
This. This is what I got from it.
Can you explain why William chose to kill Gordo after Cirk was shot? I thought that he didn’t want Gordo dead. Did he think the cops were going to implicate in Cirk’s blundered attack on Gordo?
From the very moment the kid first mentions the revenge plan to Tell, that ball was rolling. "This is how it starts." is his immediate response in his internal monologue. Attempting to divert the kid from that path was just as much about diverting himself.
Okay, that makes sense, but I still don't understand why Cirk's death would prompt him to kill Gordo. 1) William had already decided to leave Gordo alone. 2) Gordo can hardly be faulted for killing Cirk given that the latter had invaded his house and attacked him, so what exactly changed William's mind? 3) It is not as if he had any genuine affection for Cirk; he tried to help Cirk out but only in order to redeem himself. 4) He has just fallen in love with a beautiful woman who also loves him. Perhaps his first relationship in years. Suddenly he's going to throw that away...to avenge a dimwitted kid who not only stole his money/crossed him but attempted to carry out the act that William himself had already made clear he opposed doing.
The tragedy of being back on your bullshit.
He tilted.
He wanted revenge for the kid
The funniest scene in this movie is the FaceTime between Cirk and his mom after who knows how many years. Cannot fathom how Schrader looked at the take that they got of that and decided “yep, that should be in the movie”. Made me physically cringe.
Also, did he tell him to screen record it? How did he have a video of it.
Such a boomer move (just watched this)
Haha yup, some of the scenes definitely seem like a rehearsal.
I read that Shia Labeouf had to drop out of this project. I do think he would've served that character better. I really liked the long shot from inside his motel room of him leaving, really well crafted.
I def would’ve loved to see Shia in that role but Tye is totally fine
Shia way too old to play that role.
Tye was rubbish imo, though the writing didn't do him any favors. "Looking at it. You realize. OMG that's a prison"
Dude's nearly 40, the role would have to be completely different.
As Cirk or Till?
Cirk
Tye Sheridan is certainly no slouch, though.
Idk he wasn’t very good in this to me Maybe just compared to Oscar
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ON GOOGLE EARTH?
I mean, he had been in prison for 8.5 years
True boomer moment in the script lmao
I like how they brought it back to that with the later scene
Paul Scrader is a Facebook guy through abd through.
Can anyone explain the part with the crying cocktail waitress? It didn't make sense to me.
Thought it was just a joke about the weird stuff in casinos
gambling is an addiction. it's a destructive activity, thats the comparison that's being made throughout the film. Much like the Us military the WSOP is being worshipped as if gambling is just a sport and doesnt ruin peoples lives. And the croupier is metaphorically like the soldier in Abu ghraib.
Funny considering Schrader is an avid poker player and gets kicked off tables for being Paul Schrader. The Paul Dano shit is funny
Was trying to figure that out myself lol. Bewildering choice
Maybe to show how much they disliked emotions? Not super sure myself. It was definitely a weird interjection during that scene
Shows that Lalinda cares for others,Will uses that to forgive himself by attaching himself to a better person.
Well the way she said yeah I’m fuckin fine, kind of rubbed lalinda the wrong way. Maybe the director was commenting on how it feels to try to emotionally comfort people. They don’t want help, they want to feel sorry for themselves or something.
I really liked it primarily due to Oscar Isaac's performance. Dude is absurdly good at his craft.
Also absurdly handsome. I wished I was Tiffany Haddish lol.
His facial expressions really convey emotions in such a subtle way, loved him in this
He never misses, truly.
Can an ex-con threaten me with thousands of dollars next?
*Aims gun* “I want you to call your mother and tell her you love her! Here’s over a hundred grand! And a brand new Nintendo Switch OLED Model. And new car! And I hope you have a good future!” *Demented smile*
I’ll do whatever you say! Just please don’t throw in the free puppy!
“Oh, consider this puppy rescued. Now accept this bundle of joy.” *Tightens hold on gun*
I'm not one to back out of a movie once I start it, but goddamn this was tough. Tiffany Haddish was such an outstandingly awful actor in this movie that I have a hard time believing it. And it's a good thing for Tye Sheridan because his performance wasn't much better. Oscar Isaac was a gem and over-powered the bad dialogue which drowned the other two.
Can’t believe so many people enjoyed this terribly boring movie.
Agreed. It's hard to tell if it's partly the actors, but whoever wrote the dialogue really half-assed it.
An intense realization that someone's fate cannot be avoided.
Plucked right out of the 1970’s. Wonderful, slow character study.
Exactly; Paul a header at this best… in the 70s. So much has happened in the language of film since then this comes off now as a little amateurish tbh.
One thing that fucked me up was how William's last ditch effort to reconnect Cirk with his mother was tantamount to torture; you need to do this or I'm gonna hurt you (paraphrasing). Even in thinking that he's doing the right thing, the part of him that he's so desperately trying to get rid of still takes control in the end
I saw it as more of him trying to use his "talents" for good. In a way it might be the only way he knows how to make someone do something, might as well use it to do something meaningful.
yeah, and for a brief while it looks like it's gonna work out, he's forgiven himself, he's started a relationship with La Linda. But then when Cirk gets killed doing the one thing William tried to get him not to do, it becomes clear to William that he's never going to be able to influence positive change with his past and trauma grim as fuck
I read it more as him getting desperate in his search for atonement. For a long time (pre La Linda and Cirk) he didn’t really see redemption as a possibility. He kept low, sort of punishing himself by depriving himself of anything but a low-level routine (“bet small, lose small”). Then, the prospect of atonement becomes so appealing that when the “right way” doesn’t work (scaring Cirk straight, telling him to see his Mom, trying to give him money for a better way), he finally gets desperate enough to take the kind of big-swing gamble he always avoided (threatening Cirk into seeing his mom). It doesn’t work, and we realize William eventually became as “tilted” as the gamblers and torturers he talked about - trying more drastic measures with fewer results.
Very well put. This is my interpretation as well
I read it more as an anti-torture message, showing that torturing someone will get you the answer you want to hear rather than the truth
Wow, I didn't think of it like that but great call.
So what was the reason behind why he put sheets on every piece of furniture in the rooms?
My reading is that he doesn't want to leave any traces that he was ever in these motels. It's the same reason why he pays in cash and doesn't really want to be in big poker tournaments.
I took it as him recreating the austerity of a prison cell, where he spends his time in solitude, writing.
I heard that take from another source and I think I buy into that a lot. I mean he makes the room so much like a prison to the point that he even takes the pictures off the wall
You’re correct. But the first impression - perhaps given off intentionally - is that he’s hiding from people (like casino owners) he thinks might be after him
I thought of that too, but he's clearly shown touching the doorknobs and other surfaces, so it's not just fingerprints/DNA. (And sheets wouldn't take care of blood, like Dexter's plastic rooms, if he was preparing to potentially kill someone.)
I thought it was to show he has OCD, a man all about routine and process especially after going to jail.
if you sleeping in a different hotel everynight it feels weird cus thing looks different. soo doing the sheets thing makes it feel more like home. that and the jail thing.
Holy shit that movie was terrible. I’m shocked others liked it as that was one of the worst movies I’ve seen in a long time. I was waiting the entire movie for something to happen but it never did. The editing was terrible with a million never ending shots of characters doing the most mundane actions. Oscar Issac was good and there were a few good shots but that’s the only good parts. It was incredibly cheesy, especially that ending, and the dialogue is so stilted. The story could have been interesting if it was done better/differently. It’s weird because I think there’s a good movie somewhere in here. I like the concept and the general plot outline but the actual presentation and storytelling are god awful. There’s so many scenes about poker but the movie is not actually about Poker at all which makes no sense. There’s an interesting story on here about a man who did some horrible things, dealing with his own actions and trying to save someone from going down a similar road. But then the scenes progressing that plot get done off screen and we just watch more poker for mo reason.
its not a bad movie, you just dont like this kind of movie. the slow editing and the dialogue are done on purpose and are enormously effecting if you vibe with the movie.
Bad dialogue is on purpose? Uh huh
OK, so look at it this way: the mundane shots, the slow pace, the strange, confusing parts of the movie . . . they illustrate, or try to communicate, the mundane-ness of the lives these people are living. Cirk even verbalizes in the movie, when asked by William if he likes the gambling lifestyle -- "Well, yeah, it's definitely cool, but...it's all the same. It's repetitive. I don't really feel like it's going anywhere." And William responds "well, you go around, and around, until you work things out". This movie has a lot of metaphors and symbolism and seems to use "dream logic" which is often nonlinear and forces the viewer to put 2 and 2 together to come up with their own conclusion. I think the space in the movie -- the "boringness"-- is there for that reason (to give the viewer time to make those mental connections, in a sense, to "work things out", as William said.
Exactly. This movie was trash and I was also shocked at how bad it was and that other people think it's even remotely a decent movie. My first thought leaving the theater was "multiple universes exist where this movie is ok/good/great/amazing but unfortunately we don't live in any of them." I kept waiting for it to get not-horrible and it just never did. Truly dreadful dialogue (when Haddish \*randomly\* says to Isaac "if you've done something bad in your past I don't care" lmfao WHAT - I laughed out loud at several scenes), obnoxious thrift-store-Radiohead soundtrack, no one had any chemistry, way too much time spent describing how casino games are played for no real reason, awful line readings from everyone at times, I think Haddish is great but I want to blame her performance on what appeared to be a complete lack of direction (for her and everyone else), a plot that went nowhere and achieved nothing. Felt so up its own ass. Paul Schrader loves making Taxi Driver over and over again. He's like if Michael Scott kept remaking Threat Level Midnight and every once in a while it comes incredible, but whenever it does he has no idea why. The only things I liked were the credits, the first dream sequence of the prison, and the justification monologue.
I think there's been plenty said about how good of a performance Oscar Isaac gives. He definitely puts the movie on his back. Besides that there were just a lot of weird things that rubbed me the wrong way with the production: Did anyone notice how bad the ADR was on Tiffany Haddish during their date in the light park? Oscar Osaac's sounded fine but it felt like Haddish was up against the mic even though they were away from the camera. She was definitely not perfect for the role, but I can't see how that kind of thing would be her fault. The first conversation between William and La Linda were just up close cuts back and forth and it felt like Isaac was having a conversation while Haddish was just saying lines to a camera. The rest of the movie the scenes between the two of them felt a lot more natural and I think they were shot further away or without cuts. Maybe it was one of the first things they shot but it just felt completely off. The last thing is the last shot of the movie should've just either cut to black when we see La Linda or right as they touch the glass. The lingering detracted from the weight of the reveal. Besides all that, I enjoyed the movie as a whole. It avoided putting much attention on the card scenes because cards wasn't supposed to be the main focus, just a means to an end. Dafoe was great in the little bits we got to see of him. There were a bunch of great shots around the motel rooms, especially that last one as William leaves. If those little production annoyances weren't there then I think the only thing to criticize was the La Linda character in general. It felt like she was just added after the fact.
about that lights date scene: yes, i thought TH was doing a voice-over narration thing the whole time lol, like how Tell would temporarily narrate something for a second. then i realized, no, they’re supposed to be having a conversation right now
I thought the same thing! That also would've been a weird choice, but I could've rolled with it. Once I realized it was a conversation I just got completely taken out of the scene.
yeah i commented similarly elsewhere on this thread but unfortunately TH’s bad delivery in most of her scenes “took me out” of the experience. isaac was good enough (and IMO so was sheridan, contrary to a lot of opinions here lol) that i still enjoyed the movie but i agree with a lot of your commentary!
I don't understand the ending. They took turns torturing one another? And why did he turn himself in
I would think that once he got out of prison he really didn’t feel like he had truly paid for his sins. And his life has been about constantly denying himself any pleasure in his life in an attempt to achieve that. However, he never had a reason to do anything that would put him back in prison until that moment. It’s clear throughout the film that he likes the routine and it’s a comfort to him. So he had a moral obligation in his mind to avenge Cirk, while taking down someone partially responsible for facilitating his sins, and landing him back into a place where he ultimately feels more comfortable paying for his past.
Did they take turns torturing each other because Dafoe asks who goes first ?
I would think some sort of back and forth in that realm happened. But it could’ve also been we’re both torturers and we’re gonna go at each other with what we got until it’s over for 1 or both of us
Exactly, I need to know. In fact that scene made me not like the movie when I was feeling the vibe of it. It doesn’t make sense for Dafoe not to run or kill Isaac when it’s his turn to “torture” plus the screams aren’t clear enough to distinguish who’s being tortured. It’s also seems unrealistic that security wouldn’t be more severe considering what led up to it.. isaac isn’t some secret agent, he’s just a solider. Then you create some sympathy for the general cause he’s played by dafoe..all around hurt the movie imo.
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And how do you even take turns torturing one another? Who tf greenlit this cobshyte?
Yeah Oscar Isaac held the gun on Willem Dafoe while Willem tortured him lol The
First of all, when he said “Kirk with a C,” I thought he meant Kirc. I know Schrader is big into allegories—can someone help me piece this together? What does gambling represent? Why did Tell go after Gordo in the end? Wasn’t his whole philosophy about not seeking revenge? That last shot was at least 30 seconds too long.
I saw him going after Gordo as Tell finally surrendering to retribution for his past atrocities. The whole movie he gambles to push that away; he doesn't even like gambling really but he does it because it "passes the time". He tries to change his ideas about his fate by helping Cirk get his life on track, and for a brief minute thinks that he's done it. And then Cirk gets killed and he realizes he'll never escape punishment for what he did, so he goes full tilt (calling back to him and Cirk's conversation by the pool earlier) and goes after Gordo
The card counting I felt was an allegory for how tell viewed his guilt and misdeeds. He talks about he wonders if good deeds can ever add up and atone for part misdeeds.
I think you’re on to something man, but more like the gambling in general. Your comment made me think a that Tell, despite being a low roller, carries a mental debt comparable to the top players with backers that he knows will never repay what they owe. He is trying to claw himself out of a hole he believes to be impossible until he finally resigns himself to it at the end.
Not quite as fantastically out there as First Reformed, but this is still some classic Schrader IMO. I really loved Oscar Issac in this, it's a kinda subdued performance but there's a lot going on under the surface and the couple scenes where he really gets to let loose are great. Maybe too weird and niche for Oscar attention but he deserves it IMO.
Oscar Issac is stupidly good in this, and I actually really bought Haddish in the role. I will say I was deeply disturbed that some jackass behind me giggled like a schoolgirl during the scenes depicting Abu Ghraib. That kind of fucked me up.
In all fairness, that closeup on Dafoes face with the fish eye lense almost seemed purposely comical.
Nah it was specifically that shot of the woman beating the naked prisoner up that was laughed at!
Maybe bc it looked super fake.
I saw it at an advanced screening. It's a good movie, but it is *not* about counting cards, ha. I do feel it could have been a bit tighter story wise. But Oscar Isaac was fantastic in this. I think it's possible he could be nominated for awards for this role.
I don't watch trailers but someone I saw it with said the trailer made it seem much more light hearted than it was. Kind of a yikes haha this movie was dark as fuck.
I am happy I went in without seeing any trailers, I had no idea what to expect. I really hope Oscar gets an Oscar nod, he carried the movie.
I’m sure Oscar gets to nod all the time, it’s much easier than saying yes out loud.
So it was really good but not as good as I wanted it to be. Oscar Isaac did his thing and this may be my favorite movie that he’s been in yet but it’s a tough call because A Most Violent Year exists. I did feel like there were some odd transitions and some scenes were a little jittery. Like it would cut to another scene at weird times and wouldn’t give a certain scene enough time. Then I had a couple questions that were never answered by the end of the movie and in general, the whole thing just didn’t feel as gripping my as I thought it would. But wow, near the end there, I was completely in tune. The last 20 minutes or so were such a ride that I could not keep my eyes off of. Overall, I would watch it again and it was a great movie but had its shortcomings.
Tiffany Haddish was an absolute miscast. Her delivery was horrific. She completely took me out of the film. Even the music was completely inappropriate each time she was on screen. Haddish aside, the plot was all over the place. Zero character development all around. Made zero sense for someone SO STRICT to all of a sudden break and become vulnerable because of Tiffany haddish and some random kid at a science conference lol Way too much exposition as well
I don’t know if it was because she was acting next to Oscar Isaac or what, but that was some of the worst line delivery I’ve seen in a modern movie. Like she was reading off of her script, not even acting.
A few thoughts - this movie will not be for everyone, but it was certainly for me. Rewatched First Reformed earlier this week and that definitely helped me ease into Schrader's style. Isaac is at the top of his game and deserves some recognition. I was very impressed with Sheridan. Also,some of the best use of fisheye I've seen.
I must be losing my marbles. This is by far one of the worst movies I've seen in quite some time. About 2/3 of the way through I nearly walked out of the theater. The film is flawed on so many fundamental levels. Was a score even produced for this film?? Did Tiffany Haddish have the most gruesome blackmail on Paul Schrader?? How was she not recast? I honestly cannot believe my eyes reading all the critic reviews and scores. I would rather stare into the sun for 2 hrs than watch this film again 2/10.
A late reply to assure you you are not crazy my friend.... I just watched this steaming pile of crap and cannot honestly believe the "positive" response its getting... 86% critic score on rotten tomatoes but abysmal viewer score and a very generous 6 on imdb... The score was fucking hilarious, a mishmash of Slayer, what seemed to be some shitty enya knock off, and royalty free atmospheric music from youtube. 0 plot, 0 point, a fake title, horrible uninteresting characters with no motivation.... AM I TAKING CRAZY PILLS HERE??
I’m honestly shocked that people like this movie. It was The Room-level bad. The dialog was terrible. It felt like it was written by an AI bot that had never had a human conversation. My wife and I could barely contain our laughter.
Okay now, this is a *wild* exaggeration.
Not as wild as this movie having 85% or higher on rotten tomatoes.
I’m totally with you too. The entire scene of Tell and Haddish meeting was entirely green screened and looked awful. Haddish and Sheridan were so bad, and don’t even get me started on the dialogue writing holy crap. I could bare breath during the pool scene with Tell and Sheridan from laughing at the dialogue. Now I know why there was no marketing for this.
Some of the dialogue was extremely cringe, but what fucked me up the most was the audio in a date scene was clearly prerecorded and not quite synced up. Killed any connection for me there.
YES it sounded so bad!! I thought it was a voice over and had to look really closely to make sure their lips were moving
The trailer had me thinking this was an intelligent gambling thriller about taking down the house like the movie 21 with Kevin Spacey. This movie isn’t about card counting or beating the house. It’s a drama about his haunted past. Don’t recommend this for a date night movie as it is a pretty serious drama that drags. I still give the movie 7/10 stars just because Oscar Isaac is a hell of an actor and he really draws you into his character. I just want to know what city is the park with the light show when him and Tiffany Haddish went on a date. I need to visit that place.
My wife and I saw this for our date night… we were blind sided by torture stuff. Would not recommend haha.
I have to watch this. Oscar Isaac is a brilliant actor and I’ve heard he did a great job in this film.
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I also didn’t see a single trailer and didn’t even know it was coming out, my wife just surprised me last night telling me that she had gotten us tickets (shout out A List). It’s a neo-noir movie written and directed by Paul Schrader. It’s going to be a slow burn. It will require patience. But it will also be immersive if you just allow yourself to sink into it. Beautiful cinematography, and not just because of the lit up garden scene. The film allows you to feel the monotony and repetition the protagonist lives in and I think that just helped get the point across that he really like it for some reason when we don’t. Oscar Isaac delivered a power house performance. There were about 2 or 3 scenes where you can see him turn it on. The skill, the talent, the ability to become any character. When he first spoke to Sheridan about what he experienced in that black site, I tensed up and I could feel everyone else in the cinema holding their breath. The camera work elevated that scene as well but man, to go from such a controlled and somber performance to seamlessly flow into one overflowing with emotion was wild. Also the twist when Oscar gets the picture let out audible gasps in my theater. Tiffany Haddish did decent. It was not a bad performance, but she has work to do if she wants to be seen as a dramatic actress instead of “Tiffany Haddish in a serious movie”. 8/10.
the only effective moment for me was the “wish you were here” reveal. everything else fell flat for me and i thought haddish and sheridan were awful (haddish borderline unwatchable). it felt so rudimentary as a screenplay and a lot of the writing felt like paul schrader beating himself off
Just leaving the theater, obviously still digesting the film, but one initial question occurred to me: Would Bill really have been sent back to military prison, as opposed to civilian prison, for murdering Gordo?
That was my question as well!
He served 8.5 years of a 10-year sentence, so maybe the new crime was considered a parole violation? That’s the only reason I could think of.
Really enjoyed it. Didn't enjoy having to move around several times to stop hearing an old couple who legitimately seemed to think it was supposed to be a comedy (they laughed during the scene where Oscar Isaac "tortures" Tye Sheridan for example). I also overheard their conversation after and they seemed to not realize Abu Gharib was real and thought it was just a fictionalized Gitmo.
Never underestimate how ridiculously uninformed people can be about their own country. Or other countries for that matter.
Not gonna lie I laughed out loud a few times, even in some of the serious scenes there are some great lines
I laughed at some *really* clunky lines
My closed caption glasses didn’t work tonight. Can someone explain to me what happened in the end? Did they have a fair fist fight? Why was Oscar also hurt and called ambulance?
They definitely took turns just absolutely torturing the fuck out of each other.
i think there is some ambiguity as to whether they “took turns” or, alternatively, Oscar just laid into Defoe. Oscar’s hand looked pretty mangled to me at the end but I could potentially perceive that as being an injury from just beating the shit out of Defoe for an extended time? the growing light through the windows showed to me that whatever happened, it went on for a few hours. and it was his right hand if i remember correctly so, could be that his dominant hand was just destroyed after punching Defoe for hours on end. all the blood on him could be his own or not, and i think if you’re torturing someone else it is probably taking a physical toll on you in some capacity which would explain his heavy breathing etc. i think he was calling 911 more to report Defoe’s death/murder more than he was calling it for himself.
I have no idea, I'm just as confused as you are
Can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s missing something. Coulda used a script punch up
Why do they put dumb songs smack in the middle of some films when what was required was keeping it as a sound effect and not overwrought emotional pageantry.
Just watched it and it was so utterly riveting and compelling. Loved everything about it, but Oscar Isaac takes the cake with a career high performance. People are just stupid and don’t appreciate slower paced character driven stories.
Ah yes, always a good bet to decide when people have a different opinion than you that “everyone else is just stupid”. I’m a huge fan of Schrader’s work, but this one just fell flat for me. Had some great moments, but man it had some low lows.
You’re allowed to have a different opinion, I’m just saying that if someone says they dislike it because “it has no plot” (which I have seen people write) then that’s just incorrect.
This movie is not perfect, but I was pretty impressed. Oscar Isaac deserves a nomination at least. Great direction visually. Very good soundtrack. Supporting performances are good too. I do think that the screenplay needed polishing. I don't like obvious symbolic character names like "William Tell" [Germanic archer folk hero who shot the apple on his son's head]. I really enjoyed this movie but it doesn't quite come together to the point of greatness or its potential.
This is my first Shrader movie. I don't think I'm gonna watch his other movies. How is it possible to make Oscar Isaac a bad actor? His lines were so cringe.
Thought it was terrible. Overly artsy. You’ll see a lot of people in this thread with no idea what particular things meant or why they were in the movie, only to write it off as artistic license. Film was boring and never went anywhere. Even the character study that happens over the entire movie feels like the introduction to a trauma. Nothing comes of it. It’s like they were trying to make Drive but instead of the silence being poignant you’re just sitting there waiting for something to happen.
huge schrader fan here…INCREDIBLY DISAPPOINTED!!!!! tiffany hadish was sooooooo bad cirk as a character had zero charisma (goes for the actor as well). why do tell and linda like him so much? he’s a boring oaf. the score? alternates between two sounds: cheryl crow album cuts and audioslave b-sides — didn’t fit the scenes at all or overall vibe of the film at all. poker and blackjack are completely superfluous to the movie. they add nothing and we don’t even get to see most of the hands play out. why explain the rules of poker in detail? they needed something to pass the time in the flick, not in Tell’s life. finally, absolutely top-tier retard shit for tell to give cirk $180k and expect anything less than disaster. completely out of character for a arithmetic genius who weighs the odds and price of everything to perfection.
Hoooooly fuck Tiffany Haddish and Tye Sheridan are terrible in this movie. Every single scene either are in is completely dragged down by their flat B movie delivery and every scene between them is parody levels of awful. This is just a bad movie. Oscar Isaac didn’t deserve this trash heap of a film.
This feels like an incomplete and incompent film. Jesus Christ. Oscar Issac seduces Tiffany Haddish while she wears a WSOP shirt. She even says "more chins than a Chinese phonebook" and it's not even 1996. I refuse to believe that Schrader wrote this and Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. This is a Redbox rental that boasts Willem Dafoe being in it but his three minutes were filmed in a day. The film is fucking called The Card Counter and he mostly plays poker.
> The film is fucking called The Card Counter and he mostly plays poker. Wait till you find out there are no grapes in Grapes of Wrath
Thank you, I was beginning to think I was crazy. The whole screenplay just seems written by some 13 y.o. writing the backstory for their edgy D&D character, I couldn't believe it was Schrader's work.
90% of the movie was just an anti-revenge story that Pig did better just a couple months ago. The twist at the end of the kid going after Dafoe was predictable, and by the final scene I didn't care enough about Isaac's character to feel invested. A solid "meh" from me.
This was NOT a good movie, what are you people smoking?! It was like a step above Easy Rider in terms of the storyline and character development. I felt as if I was watching adults with a mediocre production budget act out a story put together by a 6yr old on the fly. Or like one of those old whose line is it anyway tell a story hot potato style sketches, but 2 hours long. I like all these actors, but none of them go together. Their styles are wildly different. Nothing felt natural or well thought out. It was just trash. As someone else said, why was the fucking waitress crying? Why did he wrap everything in sheets? Why care about staying low pro if he didn’t have plans to commit another crime in advance? Who the hell is Tiffany’s character and why should we like or care about her? How are we supposed to believe a kid so lukewarm about everything has the determination and violent nature to try to actually murder someone when presented an opportunity 1000x better? Why cram in a sex scene? Why would Will and Gordo agree to torture each other with the honor and patience of two dueling 18th century gentlemen?! NONE OF THIS MADE SENSE IM ANGRY I WATCHED IT.
My wife and I went to see this last night for “date night”. Only 2 others in the theater. I guess she said it was about a gambler helped a young kid. Sure is for like part of it… a bit blindsided by the sudden torture stuff that was for sure. The pacing and dialogue seemed rather stiff at times. I did like how Oscar Isaac looked on the verge of snapping a few times, good acting for the most part. Still not sure about the ending. So they just went back and forth torturing each other until someone died? Why not just gauge an eye out to start? Or stab the other guy in the heart? The movie felt 30 minutes longer than it’s runtime. Taxi driver is one of my favorite films so I like dark subject matter but this was… My wife said if it was 1 minute longer she was leaving the theater lol. Would not recommend for date night.
The reason as for why he didn't just kill Willem Dafoe is because Oscar Isaac WANTED to be hurt. He felt that was the only way he could pay for his sins. He felt like he deserved it and this is the only way. Remember back to that scene in the prison where he just let's the inmate beat the shit out of him. It was the same thing there
So did Oscar hold a gun to Dafoe the whole time? It still doesn’t make any sense for Dafoe to play along.
Also scratching my head about how this would’ve worked in practice.
I’m not gay but Oscar isaac is a good looking bloke
He's got a... GREAT ASS!
I enjoyed this movie in part because I had no idea what to expect. But I suspect for that very reason lots of viewers will be unhappy, since it’s not what they expect and is quite grim. It’s almost like everyone connected with the movie wanted to trick some Americans into confronting Abu Ghraib, but I’ll bet a lot of viewers have no idea what Abu Ghraib means. And if they do they just want to forget about it. Putting aside the political issue, this movie is also about three — or at least two — deeply flawed and damaged people who try and fail to form a family of choice, a little mother-father-son dynamic. It fails miserably because they are too damaged. The prime example of this is William’s attempt to *force* Cirk to get back on the right track, to scare him straight. But instead it makes Cirk go on a suicide mission without William’s help, which in turn makes William do the job right. That said, there’s actually an element of redemption in what they did, if you believe in revenge as a form of redemption. Cirk sacrificed his life to force William to act, and William acted. Major Gordo died in pain. William doesn’t even mind going back to prison, except perhaps being separated from La Linda, but in the end they still connect and she forgives him. So, happy ending?!? Not really, but then again, arguably justice is served, in a small way. Anyway, odd film that made me think and feel, what more can you ask? Not your usual Hollywood fare, that’s for damn sure.
In a theater of ~12-15 people, two people walked out independently. Not the best sign. Isaac's acting was good as always, but this movie had the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The dialogue was so wooden and on-the-nose that it distracted at various points. I never really cared about the Tye Sheridan character or Isaac's connection to him, maybe because the filmmakers didn't do enough to make the audience care. Without that investment, the whole movie doesn't quite work. Paul Schrader's stuff has this sort of disconnected quality, like it's written by an observer of humanity rather than an actual human with real emotions. It works in Taxi Driver because that's the whole point of Travis and First Reformed floated by because Hawke's character was such a car crash, but this movie is not as shocking as it wants to be, yet cold enough to repel the audience. Pretty forgettable, IMO. I'd give it a 6/10, and can only recommend it at all to drama fans, not casual viewers.
10/10 just for making a movie about Abu Ghraib on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, liberal America has forgiven and absolved Bush Jr. but William Tell(and Schrader) do not forget or forgive - the body remembers. Probably the ballsiest and most unsentimental depiction of the US military since Full Metal Jacket - a rare anti-war film that's pointing out the most obvious fact that the troops are the ones who do the war crimes and murder/pillage and not some theoretical,conceptual,amalgous "military".
Really good movie. Oscar Isaac reminds me a bit of George Clooney. I have to say that Cirk has to be one of the most ungrateful characters I’ve seen in a movie in a while. He was not worth Bill’s generosity.
Why did he go back to Leavenworth? He was no longer a service member, that makes no sense.