The Card Counter (2021)
Directed by Paul Schrader
William Tell just wants to play cards. His spartan existence on the casino trail is shattered when he is approached by Cirk, a vulnerable and angry young man seeking help to execute his plan for revenge on a military colonel. Tell sees a chance at redemption through his relationship with Cirk. But keeping Cirk on the straight-and-narrow proves impossible, dragging Tell back into the darkness of his past.
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The actor’s samurai-like performance recalls the charismatic mobster he played in “A Most Violent Year,” and stakes the movie to whatever it needs during flat dialogue scenes and Bressonian stretches of physical behavior.
The busy role-player ( Ex Machina , A Most Violent Year , various Star Wars installments) materializes on the casino floor like a business-casual vampire in a cemetery of slot machines—replete with pallid face, black suit, stiffly deliberate movements and grim expression.
Isaac plays this all beautifully, with a mixture of the existential fatigue that he showed in “Inside Llewyn Davis,” the clenched rage from his role in “A Most Violent Year” and the detached sorrow from his remade creature form in “Annihilation.”