During his eight years in prison, William Tell (Oscar Isaac) learns to count cards, and once released, he makes his rounds through seedy casinos winning low stakes games to get by.  He is approached by Cirk (Tye Sheridan), a confused and angry young man with ties to Tell’s own past at a security systems seminar led by Gordo (Willem Dafoe).  Feeling sympathy for the boy, Tell reaches out to La Linda (Tiffany Haddish) whose connections will fund Tell in a series of poker tournaments so that he can help Cirk get back on his feet.  

Paul Schrader returns to the shadowy corners of our culture of excess as the writer/director of The Card Counter released by Focus Features.  One of the hallmarks of Schrader’s career, which is continued in his latest work, is his focus on characters in the fringes of society.  He offers many character studies about troubled people who are stuck and trying to find a purpose or redemption in their lives. 

Isaac excels in these more reserved roles.  He is incredibly expressive as the script allows him to drop a few breadcrumbs for us to begin piecing together his tortured past.  What is most refreshing about Tell’s character is that he never uses his past as a reason to do whatever he wants as he does not appear to think society owes him anything.  It does make the opening of the film a little difficult to follow as he also does not seem to have any clear motivation, but once the script establishes the characters and their eventual goals, everything falls into place and starts picking up momentum towards the second and third acts. 

Opposite of Isaac is Haddish’s La Linda who has great chemistry with her costar, though not enough to entirely support the arc their two characters travel.  Schrader also seems to have toned her acting style down considerably and to mixed effect.  There are many poignant scenes where she matches Isaac’s energy to great success, but there are moments where her restraint is a little more distracting than anything.  Letting her be more bombastic would have helped the earlier stages of the film out of the hazy, sluggish tone and given us something – anything – to break the monotony.  After a certain point, all the C and D level casinos with their overabundance of neon lights all look the same and they blend into a muddy and messy opening half hour or so. 

The inaccessibility of the first act of The Card Counter is probably the film’s biggest flaw, second only to how little the script supports Sheridan’s Cirk.  With an already impressive resume for his young age, it is not for a lack of talent on Sheridan’s part that Cirk seems to so poorly fit into the world of the film, but rather that Schrader may not have been entirely sure how to handle him.  Cirk is the link between Tell’s past life as an interrogator and his current life as nomadic card shark, and while the script tries to volley between these two lives it fails to really deliver on either one of them.  It certainly is not a film about poker or gambling, yet it is not really a film about the horrors of war, either.  It spends its time at the intersection between the two without getting too specific or drilling too deeply down into any specific plot point. 

Ultimately, the script behind The Card Counter feels more like an outline than a final draft, which is a shame when you consider the strength of Schrader’s previous efforts.  It is like an angrier Hard Eight (1996), but what sets it apart is how it formulates a message about the effects that enhanced interrogation had on the soldiers and the questionable results achieved, but it does not really seek to expand on that issue after asking the question.  With a final sequence that is supposed to tie the film up neatly but instead places us back at square one, this frustrating watch clocks in at 111 minutes and, unfortunately, despite the combined efforts of top-tier talent throughout, the film quickly fades from memory in time with the lights coming up in the auditorium.