Croupier [IMPORT]

Rating:
Summary: Croupier
Review: This is one of the most original, exceptional movies I have ever seen. Not a moment in this film was boring. Clive Owen is quite good as Jack Manfred, the lost writer who takes a job as a croupier. Since she is my favourite actress (and actor for that matter), Alex Kingston really stood out for me as Jani, the woman who meets Jack and tells him that she needs his help to get her out of debt, by trying to stop her creditors from making a heist on a casino. Great atmospheric direction and cinematography, addictive script...the list goes on and on and on!

Rating:
Summary: PM fable...Existential Thriller...
Review: This is the brilliant...as yet cult...movie where Clive Owen makes serious bones. Directed by Mike Hodges of GET CARTER fame (legendary,existential gangster epic starring Michael Caine as ruthless Limey-Mafia Enforcer),he and too-cool-for-school,Clive carve-out a cinematic fable about PM amorality and view-to-a-kill consciencelessness." Welcome to the House of(the Dead)addiction!" declares Jekyll-like Jack Manfred to Hyde-like Jake, THE CROUPIER, as he leads his UNDERGROUND MAN doppleganger(and viewer)into endless nights of the jaded Casino demi-monde.

"I don't gamble!" chants Jack/Jake,power-tripping DEALER playing god while tempting others to grovel. "You're my conscience," Owen pleads to Gina McKee playing guileless Marion Nell his Guardian Angel lover. [She is ex-detective and mall rent-a-cop who, threatening to "shop" him, is remorselessly forgotten after she is killed by unknown thugs.] Alex Kingston plays the mysterious JANI (double-faced seductress)who lures Jack unbenknownst into incest and complicity in Marion's murder.

Lastly, there's BELLA.Kate Hardie plays ex-prostitute and druggie cohort CROUPIER who...like Dracula... puts kiss of damnation on whatever's left of Clive's illusions of himself as man "beyond good and evil"and scorned weakness of GAMBLERS he mocks and provokes. Director Hodges employment of jaded greens;luminous blacks; and toilet-tile whites, to film his odyssey into PM's First Circle creates powerful ambience of despair that's similar to the final jolt in GET CARTER. Like Jack Carter,Jake Manfred is hot-to-trot pro; watching him in action(shuffling/dealing cards like a conjurer;copping chips like Midas hoarding gold)bedazzles. But that he is a LOSER,the film leaves little doubt. Godless "gamblers"...imagining they're WHEELS...find themselves spinning endlessly under reckoning glare of THE CROUPIER who is mankind's eternal foe, as he mockingly roles them as his undying dice...

Rating:
Summary: Great film, glad to see it on DVD
Review: This was a film that I saw twice in the theaters and really enjoyed, and decided that was well worth paying for import DVD. While the film was as good as I remember, there are two things that I was disappointed with:
First, it's full frame presentation with no option for widescreen (HELLO it's a DVD we want widescreen).
The second disappointment was that the sound quality isn't perfect. There were more than a few spots in the movie where the volume levels were little off.
All that said, I enjoyed the movie and still recommend it!

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: Quintessential Guy's Movie.
Review: Well, of course their are no car chases (that's a joke) but this is a film most men will love. What there is in the film is an excellent plot that's so clever it ought to have a PhD from Harvard. I guarantee that the ending will surprise you. The lead character's travails are fascinating and will cause many a man to feel envy. I personally never thought much about what it would be like to be a dealer, or croupier, before I saw it but I gained an honest appreciation for what their jobs entail by watching it. Its also a film for writers.

Rating:
Summary: Film noir for the new millenium.
Review: What kind of people are these?"

"Drug dealers. Mostly people who work in the casino business."

"And the girls?"

"They're just girls."

"Croupier" is the kind of movie that instinctively understands that kind of dialogue, and, more importantly, what kind of story ought to surround it. It's British film noir, a slick, coolly haunting portrait of the gambling London underground. But the movie has a decidedly international feel - good film noir is good, national origin regardless.

But "Croupier" is better than that - an idealized version of the genre that seduces while it shocks. It plays itself as an easy mark, much like its protagonist, casino dealer Jack Manfred (Clive Owen) sees his clients as their grubby fingers plop chips onto the table.

But as the tense closing sequences, which play like the last blackjack game before bankruptcy, unfold, the mark becomes pretty clear. It's pleasurable to find disjointed fragments come together, but there's a deeper, more rattling effect at work from director Mike Hodges, who set the standard for British gangster flicks with "Get Carter" in 1971.

It opens with Jack, played by Owen with detached charm, struggling to make the right ends meet as a writer. A publisher wants a soccer novel, complete with blood, sex and drugs. Jack obliges but supplements his starving artist lifestyle as a croupier - that's dealer in American lingo - at the London-based Golden Lion casino.

Having excelled at it in South Africa, Jack knows this game. When he returns to the mirror-filled basement of the casino, his narration welcomes him back to "house of addiction." We come to learn what he's talking about. He's the son of a gambler, who seemingly hasn't made the right ends meet once in life. Jack won't gamble, can't gamble - it's against the croupier rules. There's other rules to which Jack commits himself. And then, one by one, he breaks them.

Screenwriter Paul Mayersburg populates the scene with the typical noirish fare - a faithful girlfriend (Gina McKee), a troublemaker (Kate Hardie), a mystery woman (Alex Kingston). Jack begins to write a casino novel and croupier named Jake; the two personas begin to blur.

"Croupier" makes much of the two ends of gambling addiction - indeed, in Jake's mind, the only two personalities in life - that of the gambler and the croupier. Gamblers have hope. Croupiers have odds. Gamblers have superstitions. Croupiers have rules. Gamblers lie. And under most circumstances, croupiers, good ones anyway, certainly do not. Just how that figures into the central sequence of the film, how morality can honestly fit into a immoral situation, is best discovered on your own. But the repercussions of that scene are stark. And then a final twist, a big javelin right into the heart of the plot, puts the pieces in place. Better yet, it reveals all the pieces that didn't seem to exist.

My favorite movies are these - the kind that wants it both ways and gets what it wants. Owen gives a fine performance - some have hailed him as a good candidate for James Bond movies - but his best work is to stay solid and move within the plot, rather than overshadow it. McKee is appropriately put-upon as the girlfriend, while Hardie, who plays a dealer named Bella, gamely plays the fringe character who "used to be in the game."

The real difference maker is Hodges, who understands noir is best filmed without snappy editing tactics and inhabiting a world where nearly everyone smokes their own brand of cigarette. His camera plays fine tricks with the casino mirrors and drab, dead-looking flats.

It's that little film of sleaze that hangs over every scene that completes the portrait. Characters speak lines like they've spoken them before, playing the same game with new faces that turn out to be old faces. I could spend all day with them, right through the moment they robbed me blind.

Rating:
Summary: I say Yay, Mike Hodges
Review: You can't say Why don't they make films as good as this anymore..They do, just in very small amounts.
This is what high quality independent film making can be when it's in the hands of a master craftsman.
Clive Owen's elegant stillness is a perfect match for this cool character. Funny how gamblers and NON-gamblers can have the same tempermants.
Alex Kingston is fab as always.
A must see.

Rating:
Summary: Minor, but good.
Review: [Please note: this is actually a review of the VHS version, which doesn't seem to have shown up on amazon yet.]
* * *
Croupier (Mike Hodges, 1998)

It's hard to watch a Mike Hodges film and not expect Timothy Dalton to pop up somewhere and snarl "lying BITCH!" Yes, the man who gave us Flash Gordon is back. Not that he went anywhere; Hodges disappeared from Hollywood after Flash Gordon, but has kept playing around the edges, directing episodes of HBO's excellent anthology series The Hitchhiker, a few other made-for-TV flicks, and the odd big-screen indie offering (Black Rainbow, A Prayer for the Dying, et al). Hard to tell whether Croupier was meant as his way back into Hollywood or just another Black Rainbow. It ended up being neither, somehow, despite reams of praise from just about every major-league critic in the book.

The story centers around Jack (Clive Owen, the driver in those BMW short films directed by big names), a writer struggling with his book and rapidly spending his advance. His father, a well-known gambler pulls a few strings and gets Jack a job as a croupier in a local casino. The job breaks Jack's writers' block, and he writes about (of course) his job and the odd characters he meets there, on both sides of the table. There's a bit more to the story than that, but given the film's pace and development, it's hard to say what without spoilers other than to say there's a thriller-type element to the film.

I spent much of my time watching it wondering what about it, exactly, caused Roger Ebert to call it a godsend. Make no mistake, it's a quite good little film, does what it sets out to do with very little fuss, and gives American viewers ample opportunity to see more of Alex Kingston (Dr. Corday on "ER") and Kate Hardie (Safe, The Krays), both of whom are so easy on the eyes it's almost criminal. Owen gives a smashing performance given that his role throughout most of the film is simply to react to what goes on around him; he never makes it boring, though, as a lesser actor might well have done. But it really is a minor film, one which in a year where more releases drew as much attention as the year's finest (Before Night Falls, Requiem for a Dream, et al.) would probably have been written off as an easy way to kill ninety minutes. And that's pretty much it; you can spend ninety minutes in many worse ways (e.g., Planet of the Apes, Scary Movie 2, Dude Where's My Car?...), but ultimately there's nothing here to have drawn the rain of praise this film received with its American release. ***