“Ballad of a Small Player” Review
Director: Edward Berger Screenwriter: Rowan Joffé Cast: Colin Farrell, Fala Chen, Deanie Ip, Alex Jennings, Tilda Swinton Distributor: Netflix Running Time: 102 min. MPAA: R
In the same way that gamblers become addicted to the thrills of casinos more than the odds, Ballad of a Small Player is too dazzled by its own decadent decor to find much personality beyond stylish broad strokes. Set in the gorgeous urban wonderland of Macau, I have to wonder how much of the original novel spends time salivating over the sights and sounds. Most films about gamblers try to understand them internally, highlighting the damaging nature of their drive. This one seems to keep everything so external that it runs more like an advertisement for casinos than anything deeper.
Colin Farrell plays the gamble-addicted and debt-drowning Lord Doyle, hiding in Macau while he struggles to win big. The opening shots set the tone of how overwhelmed the character will be with his setting, darting between more city shots than Doyle, awakening from a drunken haze. The picture meanders around the lavish interiors, slowly revealing Doyle’s massive hotel debt and his ambitions to escape another financial problem. His quest for cash will lead him towards negotiating credit with the seductive Dao Ming (Fala Chen), escaping the less-than-discreet investigations of Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton), and trying to best the ultimate player of a feisty grandma (Deanie Ip). Through all the ups and downs of his many card games, Doyle keeps trying to escape his past, occasionally bleeding into his mind amid drunken hazes like a horror film peaking through with its spooky faces.
The best thing that can be said about Edward Berger’s film is that it looks amazing. The cinematography of the many hotel halls, casino floors, and even the dank corners of apartments is mesmerizing, loaded with plenty of wide shots to appreciate all the lighting and space. For trying to establish the allure of the nightlife in Macau, the film makes a solid visual argument for why someone like Doyle would risk everything on another hand or line of credit. However, unlike Berger’s previous pictures, All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave, the visuals win out over the characters this time. More thought was placed into how quirky Swinton could look when cornered by a confrontational Farrell than any of the dialogue that would make that scene compelling beyond feeling like a hokey exchange ripped straight from an old noir picture.
This film gets all dressed up with its gambling tale and drowns itself in opulence, suffocating what could’ve been a fine performance by Colin Farrell. There’s little breathing room for him to explore the character’s suicidal thoughts and dark past, which are reduced to bursts of psychological jolts, more peppered than boiled in with the character’s mounting problems. Adding to the overproduced nature is the operatic editing and soundtrack that tries too hard to stress the grandness of Macau. But the eye-popping wonder can only do so much to make up for the lacking depth of Doyle drifting between characters more like vignettes than contemplating the dangers of a gambler’s lifestyle.
Ballad of a Small Player is best defined in one of Doyle’s sporadic narrations about how he’s a gweilo, a Cantonese term referring to foreigners as ghosts that drift through the land. It’s a term too appropriate for this picture, where Farrell feels more like a passenger than a player, more smothered than draped in the colorful glaze of the Asian setting. The result is a film that feels less like an engrossing and moody tale of a gambler riddled with greed and regret, and more like a covert travelogue for Macau to play their tables. I’ll stick with video poker at home.
