Rating: 
Summary: One of the best noir films in a long time...
Review: Saw this when Shooting Gallery released it State-side in fall 2000. One of my favorite movies of that year. Despite the disappointing ending (it wraps things up too nice and neat -- I was hoping for a more ambiguous ending), I still recommend people seek this title out. Clive Owen, depending on his role choices, has "it" -- that quality that makes for a huge star. Should be interesting to watch his career progress. The supporting cast is also superb (esp. Alex Kingston, who's been a regular cast member on "ER" since 1997).If you enjoyed this, I recommend you check out BEST LAID PLANS, another good modern noir thriller.
Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely Superb Drama with Owen Wonderful
Review: Clive Owen plays the elegant Jack Manfred, a croupier in a London casino. He's trying to write a novel but is having trouble focusing on a story. Then his father, a South African gambler, recommends Jack for the croupier job. At this point, I'm going to deviate from the other Amazon reviewers and say that I think this film is really about Jack and the way he is trying to reconcile his life from the tumultuous life he lived with his parents. I think the 3 women in the movie, the croupier job and his avocation as a writer all serve as vehicles for this far greater, dark parental triangle he's been caught in his whole life. It informs every move he makes. The whole parental relationship comes full circle with him by movie's end and you understand fully why Jack is the person that he is. The film could have been scripted by Sigmund Freud.
Rating:
Summary: A high class flick, terrific
Review: Certainly this is one of my favorite movies. It is a testament that you do not need a big budget to make a first class movie. At the heart of this flick is a writer who uses his job as a croupier both as a source of income and as inspiration for a novel he is writing. What I loved about this movie was the subtleties and twists and turns this movie makes. Full of dark characters, betrayals, and blackmail, this movie is sure to please any movie buff. I can't recommend this one enough.
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: 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: Brilliant movie
Review: "Croupier" was, simply, the best movie I saw in 2000 . . . Truly a classic that holds up under repeated viewings . . .
Rating:
Summary: A Witty, Hard-Boiled treat
Review: After far too much time spent in casinos over the past several years, I have one question: Does the dealer root for me or against me? Does he want me to walk away richer or does he want to beat me? Croupier does a fantastic job of analyzing that question. Built around an interesting, noir plot about a dealer fighting his inner demons in order to do his job and realize his dreams (as a writer), Croupier is marvelously well-paced and a satisfying film. A widescreen option on the DVD would be nice, but watch for the trailer for "Rounders" (from 1998, the "in production" Rounders trailer contains lots of stuff that never made it into the final film.)
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. ***
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: Inside info on casinos is well worth the dumb heist story
Review: There are so many good things going for this film -- an intriguing setting, hard-boiled dialogue, stylish direction, perceptive observations about human nature, interesting and sexy characters -- so it's a mighty shame that someone forgot to write a believable and satisfying story. The first half of the film, which deals with the world of casino gambling from the point-of-view of a croupier, is constantly fascinating. I was absorbed by the inner workings of the casino, the different types of gamblers who frequent them, the nocturnal lives of croupiers, and their attitudes towards gamblers. I also found Jack (Clive Owen) to be eminently interesting. I liked the way the screenplay gradually peels away the layers of Jack's character to reveal his core of contradictions (although he strictly refrains from gambling on games of chance, he becomes more and more willing to gamble on much riskier ventures, subsequently anteing up his girlfriend, his security, his life). I should note that although I enjoyed watching Jack, I did not enjoy listening to his narrated thoughts. I realize that the voiceover narration is necessary to convey the intricacies of casino gambling, but I felt it was excessive to the point of distraction. The display of some emotion could have eliminated large chunks of unimportant voiceover exposition. Okay, so Jack is detached, but I don't think he had to be that detached. But this becomes a minor quibble when compared to the bigger distractions that effectively bring about the film's collapse during the second half, which deals with the heist. I just don't get it. How can a screenwriter so perceptive about the psyches of gamblers and croupiers be so dense as to not see all the holes in the plotted heist? How can a director so attentive to the details of casino gambling be so sloppy when handling a casino heist? I have a strong urge to type out all the frustrating shortcomings in the plot and I would do it right now if it wouldn't take me forever. And what's up with that ending? Either I am too stupid to understand all the intricate complexities of the plot or it's a big cheat. I'm betting all my chips on the latter.
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