The Card Counter 2022

Hypnotic drama and revenge thriller about a professional card player and convicted guard at Abu Ghraib seeking forgiveness.

Five years after his radical "Light in Winter" reimagining First Reformed, Paul Schrader continues his late second comeback with a work that must not have been easy to get off the ground. In the credits, you almost can't get behind being able to read the ten executive producers on a title card, only to have another eight executive producers listed on another title card immediately afterwards. You want to shake hands with each and every one of them - or at least fist-bump them in Corona fashion - for making this austere and hypnotic film possible, which once again varies all the themes that have interested Schrader since "Taxi Driver", "A Man for Certain Hours" or "Mishima". William Tell (sic!) is one of those God's Lonely Men he's known for, a new Travis Bickle, Jake LaMotta, Charles Rane, a Spartan loner with a rigid moral code, played by the great Oscar Isaac as a man literally in grey, with no discernible qualities or passions. Except that he drives around the country in his car, travelling from one small card tournament to the next. There he books himself into a motel, in his room he takes down all the pictures, removes the electrical appliances, dresses all the furniture and the bed in white sheets until the room looks like the room in which the old man lies in "2001 - A Space Odyssey".

Who is this man? Why is he doing this? Schrader quickly reveals that this Tell was one of the soldiers who abused and humiliated prisoners in Abu Ghraib - and had to spend ten years in prison for it, while all his superiors went unpunished. Now his life is in a perpetual holding pattern, the card game he taught himself in prison helps him pass the time. Until the son of another Abu Ghraib prison guard enters his life, whose father crashed after prison, became a drug addict, abused his mother and him and finally took his own life. The boy wants to enlist Tell as a partner in crime to torture and kill his former superior, whom he blames for his father's death. Tell, in turn, sees in the boy a way to make amends. He takes him under his wing and for the first time agrees to participate in lucrative tournaments with the help of the well-connected La Linda, using the winnings to give his protégé a path to the future. The path of good intentions, however, is thorny in this film, which is visually simple and unobtrusive in the usual Schrader style and unfolds its pull through its narrative. At the end of this confession of faith disguised as a revenge thriller, which is as much a trip to hell as it is an ascension to heaven, the state of grace awaits in a seemingly endless final image. And God, who is a woman and has black skin. If that doesn't have explosive power!

Thomas Schultze.

Source: Blickpunkt:Film