William Tell is an ex-military interrogator living under the radar as a low-stakes gambler. When he encounters a young man looking to commit revenge against a mutual enemy, he takes him on t... Read allWilliam Tell is an ex-military interrogator living under the radar as a low-stakes gambler. When he encounters a young man looking to commit revenge against a mutual enemy, he takes him on the casino circuit to set him on a new path.William Tell is an ex-military interrogator living under the radar as a low-stakes gambler. When he encounters a young man looking to commit revenge against a mutual enemy, he takes him on the casino circuit to set him on a new path.
- Awards
- 3 wins & 22 nominations
- Sara
- (as Kat Baker)
- Nancy
- (as Rachel Whitney)
- Inmate
- (as Joseph Singletary III)
- Judy Baufort
- (as Amye Bousset)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaFor scheduling conflicts Shia LaBeouf dropped off the project, Nicolas Cage who is a close friend of Paul Schrader recommended Tye Sheridan to play Cirk as they previously collaborated on Joe (2013).
- GoofsThe discard tray to the dealer's right is a) too close to the 3rd-base player, and b) almost full even though there are at least two more decks in the shoe ahead of the cut card.
- Quotes
William Tell: He beat you.
Cirk: That's in the past.
William Tell: The body remembers. It stores it all.
- SoundtracksEruptar
Written by Robert Levon Been (as Robert Levon Been)
Performed by Robert Levon Been (as Robert Levon Been)
BMG (ASCAP)
Having written Taxi Driver and directed First reformed, Paul Schrader knows something about deeply-troubled souls, especially haunted taxi drivers and small-town cops. Now add card counting loner.
In The Card Counter, former army interrogator Bill has turned card champion while relishing his 8 ½ years in Fort Leavenworth for, it would seem, brutality at Abu Ghraib as a grunt guard. "Relished" because of the control prison afforded him, where he learned his card-playing trade. Nothing has helped him, however, to expiate his sins and redeem himself until he meets young Cirk (Tye Sheridan) and La Linda (Tiffany Haddish).
Experience the most accomplished cinematic anti-hero of the year-Bill roams the landscape of mid-west casinos, forgettable and banal, peopled by losers and wannabes looking for a romantic hit, even as the house controls their fortunes like a wizard pulling the strings of fate and laughing at his victims' impotence. Except for always-in-control Bill, whose days of interrogation control, taught to him by a sadistic major Gordo (mustachioed Willem Dafoe, inscrutably eccentric and scary), and who bets small and wins small to avoid being ejected for what he is, an accomplished card counter haunted by the ghosts of his tortured and torturing past.
The exposition is slow, more distributed than immediate disclosure. This pace lets the audience sink into Bill's world of gambling and isolation as he reveals in voiceover his thoughts about the lives he ruined and the officers like the major who escaped punishment. While Isaac steadily plays Bill with a smoldering intensity, the future begins to loom large while he and Cirk plan a reconciliation for Cirk and his mother, a consummation with La Linda, and a Dantean end for the major. In the first lies the seeds of Bill's redemption while in the last lies the revengeful legacy of an Abu Ghraib that just won't go away.
Shrader's shots are either long, to establish the emptiness of the casinos, or rapidly roaming to heighten the horror of scary Abu Ghraib, frequently tracking the anti-hero in his measured quest to control and win. As a knight errant, he meets his lady in La Linda, whose place in this man's world as a master of a stable of players is never fully realized, so obsessed is Schrader with his saturnine sociopath. In that regard, Isaac gives one of the year's most nuanced performances in the tradition of the lost but deadly Travis Bickel in Taxi Driver. Isaac is one of his generation's best actors, like Tom Hardy, whom you might forget except for the memorable characters he plays like William Tell. And Schrader does tell as powerfully as he ever did.
Just don't expect to learn how to play better poker, for The Card Counter is all about people-if you're good at the game, it's because you can look past the cards into the soul of your opponent. Paul Schrader is just such a soul-searching writer/director. BTW-Martin Scorsese is a producer and presents the opening title card--no surprise there.
- JohnDeSando
- Sep 9, 2021
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Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Official site
- Language
- Also known as
- Máy Đếm Thẻ
- Filming locations
- Gulfport Harbor Lights Winter Festival - 2269 Jones Park Dr, Gulfport, Mississippi, USA(Tell and La Linda walk into Garden Glow)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $2,657,850
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $1,039,580
- Sep 12, 2021
- Gross worldwide
- $5,040,860
- Runtime1 hour 51 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.66 : 1
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