'Ballad of a Small Player' is colorful and not
Netflix
Trailers misrepresent all the time, but “Ballad of a Small Player” stands as a particularly egregious example of promising one thing (heart-pounding whirlwind of excess and descent into high-stakes debt and debauchery) and delivering another (painfully familiar and actually quite dull plodding of a very traditional kind of dope). What is supposed to be the point of interest here? The idea that people will gawk at anything involving a lot of money? Or that the twinkling lights of Macau and the sharp colors (the movie reunites director Edward Berger and “All Quiet on the Western Front” cinematographer James Friend, clearly excited to work with a very different palette) will compensate for a story that is just a worse version of every other story about gamblers?
Lord Doyle (Colin Farrell) is the sort of guy that claims a lord never goes back on his word. Except his identity is a lie, and more importantly his motivation for fiendishly pursuing victory at the baccarat table is mostly because he’s a gambling addict and less so because he might be forced to pay back money he stole. He’s not a nice person and doesn’t really have any goals or redeeming features, and the relationship that develops between him and Dao Ming (Fala Chen) never feels credible.
In fact, much of the movie, based on Lawrence Osborne’s 2014 novel and written by Rowan Jaffe, “BOASP” feels poorly defined — from the rules of the featured game (a climactic hand hinges on a detail that hasn’t been identified before) to the odd dynamic between Doyle and Cynthia (Tilda Swinton), who has been hired to find him, to why this guy only plays games of chance instead of a skill he could develop and utilize.
Little really needs to be said about Berger’s disappointing follow-up to the crackling “Conclave,” which strands a typically solid Farrell in a narrative that lunges for something otherworldly or unexplainable when in fact it’s just thin and uninvolving. Delivering yet another chronicle of an addict that in so many ways avoids the necessary emotion, danger and just scene-to-scene specificity necessary to stand out isn’t just a bad bet, it’s barely wagering anything at all.
D+
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