There are people who are haunted by the past in a hateful, never compassionate way. They can be dreams or better, nightmares, or ghosts and memories of actions committed for which they evidently regret, or for which they have suffered too much. the character of oscar isaac in the card counterby Paul Schrader (writer of Taxi driver) is the best sample.

Oscar Isaac, Guatemalan actor from Dunewho came to Argentina to film final operation about the capture of Adolf Eichmann, was Poe Dameron in the saga of Star Wars and recited lunar knightthe Marvel series, plays this awkward character, a poker player with an icy gaze.

As with Schrader’s previous films, not only as a writer, but also as a director, they focus on tormented characters, as if they were never safe from God. And we’re not just talking about First Reformedwith Ethan Hawke as reverend.

William Tell wanders from casino to casino looking for an answer. A solution. Something. It is clearly atonement for his sins (he was a brutal military interrogator at Abu Ghraib), who ended up on trial and in prison. A man who there, behind bars and in his tiny cell has learned without any other remedy that the routine suits him.

go to purgatory

William is in limbo, probably on his way to purgatory.

There are several aspects of William’s life and thought that are not very explicit. Perhaps the decision to remove the paintings and mirrors from every motel room where he sleeps is due to his past in military prison, in which there was no possible decoration. From his suitcase he takes some white sheets, with which he will not make the bed, but will cover everything: the chair, the table… And as Schrader’s stories also unfold, the protagonist will come across characters who, in a way or in the other , They will not change your existence, but they will move you, they will shake your structures.

Like when he’s approached by a young man named Cirk, with a “C”, whose abusive father was trained by the same military man (Willem Dafoe, with a mustache) as Will. Obviously his father committed suicide and Cirk (Tye Sheridan, da Ready Player One, Cyclops in the X-Men films) is driven by revenge. And he wants to kill Gordo, who is now giving safety talks.

But William, we imagine, has an idea. Perhaps, in one of those, he will be able to convince the boy who dropped out of college to rethink his future, paying off his huge debts in money with what he wins at the poker tables, and redeeming his past.

Here’s what it is the card counter.

And like betting agent La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), who approaches him with the intention of getting people to give her money to play poker and win big money. But William doesn’t care about money. He prefers to play and win small amounts of money, also because he is a card counter, which is forbidden in casinos. But hey, everything can change.

But the film gets crazier as the chaos of that stormy past integrates into William’s present. He is not the card counter a fast-digesting film, and some may find it boring. But he has a flesh and blood character, who breathes and whose blood circulates in his veins.

the card counter

Good

Suspenseful/Drama. USA, 2021. Original title: “The Card Counter”. 111′, SA 16. Of: Paul Schrader. With: Oscar Isaac, Tiffany Haddish, Tye Sheridan, Willem Dafoe. Available in: HBO Max and Apple TV+.