Doing it well, from torture to cards
Absolution is hard to find in the world of Paul Schrader, no matter how hard his heroes try. They might save a young prostitute (“Taxi Driver”), try to save lives as a paramedic (“Bringing Out the Dead”) or even jump off the cross (“The Last Temptation of Christ”). Redemption, when it’s found, requires pain.
Schrader wrote the above films, all of which were directed by the likeminded Martin Scorsese. He cuts even deeper when he’s behind the camera, as in the simmering new thriller “The Card Counter.” Here the haunted ascetic is William Tell, played by a deeply minimalized Oscar Isaac.
William travels from city to city, betting small but always winning, rightfully confident in his system. A former interrogator and torturer at Abu Ghraib, he did eight years in prison for his sins, during which time he learned to scale back and, like many Schrader heroes, do one thing exceptionally, obsessively well.
Schrader has famously written about transcendental style in film, a stripped-down aesthetic that, in calling little attention to itself, strikes a note of spiritual seeking. In Isaac he may have found his ideal star. There’s an unbending stillness to his performance here, a refusal to go big even when the story might suggest it.
Instead he enacts William’s rituals, steady and safe — until the outside world comes crashing in to tilt his equilibrium.
William’s past resurfaces in the form of Cirk (pronounced “Kirk”), played by a hangdog Tye Sheridan. Cirk’s father was also on duty at Abu Ghraib. Things did not end well for him. Now the kid wants revenge against the independent contractor (a snarling, mustachioed Willem Dafoe) who called the shots and got off scot-free. Rounding out the trio is La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), who runs a stable of card players and takes a liking to the mysterious counter.
Schrader is in one of those late-career grooves that you always like to see from a veteran filmmaker who has something to say. The America navigated by these characters is rotting at the core, despite (or because of ) the knucklehead card player who wears an American flag tank top and travels with a chanting entourage (“U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”). Somehow this is the guy who’s been in my head since I saw the movie. As William points out, the loudmouth sacrificed nothing, but he shouts like he’s saving the world.
There’s nothing fancy or glamorous or even romantically seedy about the way William plies his trade. It is simply what he does, and ultimately who he is. It is how he puts distance between himself and his past.
But, as in film noir, just because you’re done with the past doesn’t mean the past is done with you. Schrader’s characters are haunted (please see “First
Reformed” if you haven’t). They’re also deeply moral, not in a dime-store virtue kind of way but in the sense that they struggle mightily to do the right thing. In the end they’re painfully human, which is why they keep resonating after the lights go up.