The Card Counter is not what you would typically call entertainment. You wouldn't expect it to be coming from the writer of Taxi Driver. But this is the writer/director Paul Schrader who gave us the much underrated and moving work Affliction, based on the work of the wonderful Russell Banks. This Paul Schrader does not need to shock us or get in our face. This Paul Schrader works in the unsaid, the subtext, the thing lying beneath the surface, sometimes so deep that we ourselves do not really know it. On the surface Card Counter is about what it's title says it is about: A poker player who is very good at counting cards and calculating the odds, played by Oscar isaac, who doesn't seem to know how to give a poor performance. But simmering underneath Isaac's seemingly cool, even cold exterior is a man who spent years in military prison, one of those who took the fall for the "enhanced interrogation" going on at rendering sights during the wars with Afghanistan and Iraq. We find this out because a young man comes into his life bent on revenge for a father who suffered the same fate and committed suicide. Despite his cautious and detached approach to the world Isaac's character does not turn the young man away. Like many of Paul Schrader's characters he cannot hide from his darkness. The Card Counter is a tense psychological drama. Beautifully acted and beautifully told. Isaac in particular is wonderful. The mature Paul Schrader does not show us as much violence the way he did in Taxi Driver or many of his early films. The violence in The Card Counter is for the most part an unseen violence that happens inside human beings. But it is there. And it is very much compelling. Card Counter is still very much vintage Paul Schrader. It just also happens to be a very mature and more thoughtful, more pensive Paul Schrader.
Review of The Card Counter
