THE CARD COUNTER (C-minus) - It may be the case that Paul Schrader's story line of brooding men seeking redemption for two hours has run its course. Here he shows kinship with the likes of David Mamet and Aaron Sorkin by offering to teach us how to play poker and blackjack via a character who participated in the Abu Ghraib atrocities in Iraq and did time in prison for it, coping by playing cards 24/7 to the exclusion of having a life.
Oscar Isaac's eyelids are particularly heavy -- though his hair is always perfect -- as William Tell (klever!), a world-weary soul who exhibits quirks that you'll only find in a movie: in the dive hotels he inhabits along the road, he wraps all the furniture in sheets and at nights, aided by a desk light and a bottle of booze, he scribbles stray philosophical thoughts in a diary using (of course) an old-timey fountain pen. The horrors of war and jail have made him quirky.
For no real good reason, he accepts the friendship of a much younger man (Tye Sheridan), whose father also was traumatized at Abu Ghraib under the directives of the brutal military contractor who goes by Gordo (Willem Dafoe). Because this is a movie, Sheridan's character is named Cirk, which often gets pointed out as "Cirk with a C," ad nauseam. You can also tell it's an outre film, because it's one of those annoying movies where a character orders a drink and the other person will decide to have the same drink; for some reason, that happens three times in a row.
You start to feel bad for Isaac, a good actor searching for some way to bust through these cliches. Tell meets an agent, La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), who draws him in with a sponsorship that can put the low-stakes gambler on the map, if he wants it. Isaac and Haddish have little chemistry; it's actually refreshing that they are just friendly business partners, until, of course, they suddenly and improbably hop into bed. Tell's main rival is a red-white-and-blue-clad character named Mr. USA, who wins a lot and is followed everywhere by flunkies who chant "USA! USA!" after every victor. Gee, who's the real patriot at the poker table, I wonder ... yadda, yadda, yadda. The kid wants to exact revenge against Gordo, but Tell resists. Does he want fame and fortune, or does he want to exorcise his ghosts?
This movie plods from scene to scene; Isaac has never been the most dynamic screen presence. Considering the stakes (both literally and psychologically), little seems to be at stake, in the end. From "Taxi Driver" to 2017's "First Reformed," Schrader's earnest examination of manhood, religion and patriotism has yielded some powerful drama. But after five decades, this brand of masculinity feels stale, if not always toxic.
FREELAND (C+) - It's difficult to feel sympathy for Devi, the aging boomer and former idealist hippie whose 30-year underground weed business is getting aced out by the legalization of pot and those who decide to follow the rules. This maudlin slice-of-life character study, even at a slim 80 minutes, struggles to draw us in to the tale of a longtime freeloader, living the high life tax-free but now facing a reckoning in the real world.
Devi, played by Krisha Fairchild (who splashed memorably in the jagged "Krisha"), leads a crew of millennials, who mostly get high all day while they work the harvest on the lush California farm. They smoke so much pot that the viewer might feel like someone late to the party who then doesn't get the joint passed to them. Meanwhile, doom hangs in the air, as Devi's jig is up, and she doesn't seem to have the funds or the wherewithal to transition to legitimacy.
The crew that she is stringing along (Frank Mosley is refreshing, but Lily Gladstone ("Certain Women") is underused) don't seem fully invested in this outdated utopia of communal living. Some of Devi's fellow boomers from her past occasionally stop by to reminisce and to rue the loss of their Sixties innocence, but they come off mostly as mewling about an outmoded rose-colored view of lost idealism. Filmmakers Mario Furloni and Kate McLean -- who come from the documentary world -- get stuck in repetitive images, whether it's establishing shots from nature or Devi agonizing over her financial books.
Here, too, little seems at stake, and another fine actor's talents are mostly wasted.
BONUS TRACK
The closing credits to "The Card Counter," when they finally arrive, feel like a blessed end to nearly two hours of misguided drama. The soundtrack is generally "Garden State" moody, but the final song stands out, "Mercy of Man" by Robert Levon Been featuring S.G. Goodman:
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