Rating: 
Summary: Rolling life's dice
Review: Croupier enthralls with its slick humor and enigmatic presence. The inner workings of Clive Owen's Jack, a person torn who learns to live the life he might write about even as he keeps the pages coming, are on transparent display, as his witty aphorisms yield insight as often as laughs. The film loses a little steam towards the ending, but it nonetheless remains a first rate tale of enlightened cynicism seen through the eyes of the world's most discerning casino dealer.
Rating:
Summary: Hold on tightly let go lightly
Review: Stylish thriller from the UK, with the instantly likeable Clive Owen in the title role. Offering many twists and turns without insulting the intelligence of the viewer, this movie demands careful attention to appreciate its subtlety; and to know what exactly happens to his girlfriend. . .
Rating:
Summary: I can't believe this movie wasn't huge at the box office.
Review: Don't miss this movie. It is unpredictable; the characters are interesting, and just when you think you know what's going on, you find out you don't. The humor is not so stiff as one might expect from a bunch of Brits. The star is not quite as monotone as Steven Wright the comedian, but he is what I call "level" almost all the time. I found it interesting to see "behind the scenes" of casino action, and it was fun to watch this guy deal cards. This movie is very entertaining, and I intend to get my copy of the DVD as soon as I can.
Rating:
Summary: More twists than a light bulb socket
Review: A brilliant film set in the UK with enough suspenseful plot twists to keep even the most seasoned mystery reader on the edge of her seat. Clive Owen's performance is impressively versatile as he plays a struggling author who ventures into the seedy casino underground to find material for his next book. His results are not as he expected... Trivia: Croupier was disqualified from the Academy Awards after being shown on Dutch television.
Rating:
Summary: God Among Movies
Review: This was one of the very best sleeper films of the year. Clive Owen and Alex Kingston give great performances in this stylishly made thriller of a writer down on his luck. Jake is having a bad case of writer's block when a call from dear old Dad lands him a job as a croupier. He reluctantly accepts the position and continues working on his novel until a mysterious lady gambler enters the casino one night and sets his world in motion. Don't miss this film!
Rating:
Summary: Enthralling story, surprising ending
Review: I loved it! Having enjoyed Clive Owen from Second Sight and the new BMW films I thought I understood this subtle actor, but he has such a calm outer demeanor it can be impossible to predict the inner turmoils. Intrigueing and complex for a small film that 's a big thrilling journey.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining Complex Thriller
Review: This complex thriller is set in London' s gambling world, where an aspiring writer suffering from writer' s block, takes a job as a dealer to support his art. Knowing the dangers of the cards, he is adamant about remaining a professional outsider, but the temptations of the game inevitably swallow him deeper than he could have ever anticipated.
Rating: 
Summary: Cool, Ironic, Understated Mayhem
Review: A struggling writer who's a talented cardsman gets a job as a croupier, thanks to his father, in a London casino. From there the film moves into a complicated scheme to rob the casino, with violence and double dealing along the way. The one unexpected bit of retribution that hits Jack Manfred (Clive Owen) has emotional power. The ending is not exactly nihilistic, but has more than a bit of irony. Mike Hodges, who directed the first-rate Get Carter with Michael Caine, brings the same cool approach here. Owen is perfect in the lead, and the rest of the cast is excellent. Croupier is a very good story very well done. The DVD transfer also is excellent. There are no extras.
Rating: 
Summary: How did it get to be a hit?
Review: Mike Hodges and Paul Mayersberg's "Croupier" was released in Britain as a low-budget sleeper and went on to do some serious business in the USA, based on some very high-powered reviews and, presumably, audience loyalty. Yes, Mike Hodges directed that camp classic, Flash Gordon. He also directed one of the finest British gangster movies, Get Carter, with Michael Caine, many years ago. Paul Mayersberg's script for Croupier must have tempted him somehow or other, but frankly, it's hard for this viewer to see how. It's not that Clive Owen doesn't bear up manfully as the eponymous novelist/casino dealer of the title. It's not that Gina McKee isn't good as his long-suffering girlfriend, or that Alex Kingston isn't luscious as a mysterious South African woman, or that Kate Hardie doesn't bring her own brand of weird hoydenish charm to her role as a fellow croupier (croupiette?) with a "troubled" past. It's that this film sucks. And the fault can be slapped in the face of the writer. The plot, insofar as there is one, is pretty risible - Owen plays a novelist, Jack Manfred, who has worked as a croupier in his homeland of South Africa. Down on his luck, he takes a job in a London casino. Here he meets a Ruthless Casino Owner, a Breezily Amoral Fellow Croupier who takes him to a Decadent Nightspot, and after a while he gets involved with a Luscious Femme Fatale (Kingston) who has a bizarre nude scene - she walks into a room without a stitch on and proceeds to put on a nightgown before going to sleep with Jack, who is in the room already, and I mean Sleep. Why did this happen? Did we just totally have to see a naked woman at some point in this film? Not that Alex Kingston isn't exceptionally easy on the eye, cause she is - but the scene makes no sense, as we are led to assume that the two characters don't ever actually have sex. Meanwhile, Jack tries to write his novel about an Amoral Croupier, but his Life Is Becoming Like His Book. Whatever chance this film had of being interestingly nuanced and ambiguous is steamrollered by a galumphing voice-over of stunning literal-mindedness. Just when we can see Owen thinking "What an interesting woman", the voice-over says "Jack thought, what an interesting woman", and so on. Most of the time frame of the film is compressed into the last ten minutes. The voiceover is so boringly obvious, the dialogue so cheesy, that you wonder why this wasn't a novel, just as you wonder why Owen's character wasn't a screenwriter. I'm prepared to believe that Mayersberg knows a lot about the business of casinos, but it doesn't make him a writer. The original audience for this movie knew what they were doing when they let it die. What Americans have since seen in it frankly escapes me. Croupier is a bunch of fine actors and a good director struggling to polish a lump of tacky, third-rate coal. It was never going to be a diamond. Let it go. Unless you fancy a giggle at the badness of it all.
Rating:
Summary: Existential Thriller... Clive Owen's Showcase
Review: If Clive Owen is chosen to trade his "casino dealer's license" for 007's Licence to Kill,it will because of his superb performance as "Underground man",Jack Manfred in Mike Hodge's existential thriller.CROUPIER has everything going for it as PM-noir classic Clive Owen's Dostoyeskian doppelganger incarnates New Age lost soul trying to forge morality and character among other lost souls, self-condemned to THE CASINO,"the house of addiction. "The alluring, ultimately treacherous,Alex Kingston; Kate(Bella Lugosi)Hardie;and "pure of heart"(therefore,destined for betrayal and death)Gina McKee each offer Croupier Jack possiblities for death or redemption. Like JACK CARTER,Mike Hodges'other great existential anti-hero,Jack-the-Croupier-Owen is fascinating to watch as, without appeal to pity or applause" he destroys himself.
Ending to CROUPIER is nowhere near as grim as GET CARTER! But a viewer deceives himself thinking this Jack-of-the Clubs is any less a loser or Hollow Man than his PM-aged "living dead" peers. Clive Owen made his bones in this airless;colorless[photographed shadow-world black;grave-yard green and toilet-tile white, with NOT ONE SINGLE SHOT OF SUNLIGHT allowed Owen's character]; anti- world where "children of the night" wail and THE CROUPIER'S roulette ball roll is really a death knell.Yet Owen displays "the right stuff" that could make him the best Bond since Connery. Hopefully we'll see him emerge from the Croupier's tomb,going for the gold as Ian Fleming's premier superhero in CASINO ROYALE...
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