Oscar Isaac delivers a strong leading man performance in The Card Counter, an engaging drama written and directed by Paul Schrader who once again explores the moral weight placed on man and does so with unapologetic patience and fortitude.
Oscar Isaac knows how to hold the screen. It “smouldering intensity” had a face, Isaac would be it. There is a reason why the Guatemalan-born actor is often compared to the actors of the ‘70s, of which he is no doubt a fan. It’s all there in his approach to his craft, and the style in which he does it. Only makes sense then that Isaac would star in a film written and directed by Paul Schrader, a stalwart of the New Hollywood movement of the ‘70s in which he wrote Taxi Driver and directed Blue Collar.
The Card Counter features many of the themes that are part and parcel with the Paul Schrader experience. Isaac stars as William Tell, a professional gambler with a talent for counting cards, who leads a spartan existence travelling from casino to casino and taking home modest winnings so not to alert authorities.
Tell also has a dark past as an interrogator at the notorious Aby Ghraib prison, in which he was trained to torture terrorists by the sadistic Major John Gordo (Willem Dafoe). It’s a past that rattles Tell’s carefully constructed world when Cirk (Tye Sheridan), the son of one of his former colleagues, tries to recruit Tell for murderous revenge against Gordo. Tell instead takes Cirk under his wing in an attempt to sway him from a dangerous path, and perhaps find some redemption for himself.
An interesting facet about The Card Counter is how Tell is constantly on the move yet his world is always the same, with various casino dives and hotels blending into one another.
It is a world within which Tell thrives. A man of ritual, the monotony of these environments brings with it a predictability and perhaps even a feeling of control that is shattered once his past, and the chaos that it brings, catches up to him. For a man who knows what hand is coming at the poker table, life has a hand he never saw coming.
Isaac is terrific as Tell, portraying the guilt, the intelligence, the cold logic towards his work and existence, and the anger and frustration that bubbles under the surface when a wild card upends his structured life. Whether it is delivering Schrader’s well written monologues or holding the screen with his steely poker face, Isaac proves to be the perfect foil for Schrader’s particular blend of filmmaking in which The Card Counter is a highlight.
