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Croupier

1999, Movie, NR, 91 mins

Croupier: Review

CROUPIER
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A punchy, ultimately frustrating entry into the erratic but always interesting oeuvre of British director Mike Hodges (GET CARTER, FLASH GORDON). Jack Manfred (Clive Owen) is struggling to become a writer, but gambling is in his blood — he was even born in a casino back home in South Africa. But Jack is no risk-taking punter. He's a croupier, a voyeuristic and utterly impassive spinner of the wheel and dealer of the cards who can never lose because he's not really in the game — he only controls it. Jack's gambling father (Nicholas Ball) sets him up with a job at London's Golden Lion Casino, and while the late hours and excessive drinking put a strain on his relationship with girlfriend Marion (Gina McKee), Jack finds his life filling up with all the elements for a new novel, including a sticky-fingered fellow croupier (Paul Reynolds) and a mysterious South African woman (Alex Kingston) with a black eye and a dangerous proposition. Paul Mayersberg's script tortures the obvious life-is-a-gamble metaphor and milks the figure of the croupier — "the still center of the spinning wheel of misfortune" — for all its existential worth. But he has a sharp ear for crackling dialogue and Hodges knows exactly how get the blood pumping. The intricately staged scenes inside the overlit Golden Lion teem with a desperate, claustrophobic atmosphere (the production design is all about smoky mirrors and cheap glitz) but the film fires off too many intriguing plot possibilities that remain nothing more than that. The payoff does come as a surprise, but once the dust clears, there are an awful lot of discarded bits of plot left lying around. In a film that's all about mood and intrigue, Hodges gets about half of it exactly right. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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