Opiniões dos críticos

A companion piece of sorts to First Reformed, this is another bruising character study of a solitary, burdened man who processes his most intimate thoughts in a journal, living with his guilt until he’s handed an unexpected opportunity for redemption.

So this is a movie that, of course, is about much more than poker. More to the point, it’s not really about poker at all.

Schrader directs with the unhurried air of a man who has told some variation of this story many times before. The central relationships can be a little schematic, while the plot slaloms in and out of plausibility. Still, the cast keeps it honest and there is much to relish in the film’s moody, meditative intensity.

“The Card Counter” starts off as a pretty good poker movie — but, of course, it’s not really a poker movie. It’s a Paul Schrader movie, which means that it’s got much more on its mind than watching a straight flush beat a full house... “The Card Counter” is a good game that forgets it’s a game by working so hard to be a statement.

Its odd meld of drab suburban casinos, wrapped motel rooms, nightmarish Iraqi torture sequences and military correctional facilities where the furniture is bolted to the floor, all build to a video-artist vision that comes bursting surprisingly out of an old-school box – and results in one more male-slanted Paul Schrader script about a haunted man at a crossroads.

“The Card Counter” won’t make you want to become a casino rat any more than “First Reformed” made you want to become a reverend; this is an anti-romantic glimpse into the most abyssal pockets of American nowhere, full of detritus left behind by all the Danny Oceans of the world.

The Card Counter takes place in a punishing world of windowless casinos, hotel ballrooms, and highways devoid of scenery — a vision of the America used to justify the actions that now so traumatize William, that is intentionally bereft of poetry... If it’s not a country worth losing your soul for, it’s also not one that will pay any mind to a life spent wallowing in angst over it, either.

In different ways, Schrader has frequently explored seriously flawed characters working through a living hell to find a certain enlightenment, or at least partial liberation from their wayward behavior. On the surface, at least, this is a calmer, less turbulent film than some of the emotionally explosive works he’s written and/or directed.

It’s a supremely compelling tale leavened by its wry humour and a subtle commentary on the essential emptiness of American life.

Guiding Schrader’s philosophical musings in this sleek road movie, shot in artificially bright interiors and cheap accommodations, is the weight of the debt, be it financial or moral, and how one can lead to the other.

The Card Counter is both unsparing and deeply romantic, the kind of picture we don’t see every day, even at a time when new movies seem to pour into our streaming queues, if not our theaters, at an alarming rate.

Out-and-out thrills are thin on the ground: instead, Schrader uses the thriller toolkit to construct a parable of guilt and moral reckoning.