CROUPIER (The Shooting Gallery) Starring: Clive Owen, Gina McKee, Alex Kingston, Alexander Morton, Kate Hardie, Paul Reynolds, Nick Reding, Nicholas Ball. Screenplay: Paul Mayersberg. Producers: Jonathan Cavendish. Director: Mike Hodges. MPAA Rating: Unrated (could be R for sexual situations, nudity, profanity, adult themes and violence) Running Time: 91 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Good noir-ish thrillers are so few and far between that it almost breaks my heart when one with so much going for it stumbles so badly down the stretch. That's the situation with CROUPIER, a slick tale set in the world of a London casino. Jack Manfred (Clive Owen) is an aspiring novelist having trouble making ends meet while he tries to get something published. Fortunately, he has a back-up skill: Having been raised around casinos by his compulsive gambler father (Nicholas Ball) and having worked in one in South Africa, Jack is an adept black jack dealer and roulette wheel operator. His talent lands him a job in a casino where the money is great, the rules of conduct strict and the hours challenging to his relationship with his girlfriend Marion (Gina McKee). It also introduces him to some potentially dangerous characters, like a patron named Jani ("E.R.'s" Alex Kingston) who wants Jack to help her with a little insider job.
From the outset, CROUPIER looks like it has all the classic film noir elements. The protagonist narrates the story in a hard-boiled voice-over, using a third-person description of events as Jack forms his experiences into something he can write. Owen's laconic performance as Jack is perfectly pitched; he's got that Campbell Scott deadpan thing going, which is particularly appropriate since he's a dead ringer for Scott. There's a promising femme fatale in Kingston's Jani, who slowly insinuates herself into Jack's life before dropping the hammer. And Paul Mayersberg's script offers a potent combination of sly dialogue, effective characterizations and intriguing introduction to the world of the croupier. As the world of the casino becomes ever more attractive to Jack, CROUPIER builds momentum towards a resolution that seems certain to have a tremendous kick.
Only it doesn't. It's hard to imagine a more anti-climactic climax to a thriller than the one offered up by CROUPIER. The heist into which Jack is recruited takes some unexpected turns, but for once that's far from a compliment. It suddenly becomes evident that Mayersberg is going to wrap things up far too quickly to make the film's conclusion satisfying. A dead body turns up, but it never really matters in the long run. A manipulative plot is exposed, but Jack doesn't seem particularly concerned by it. A character appears to confess a secret love that makes you wonder what film you just wandered into. A film like CROUPIER absolutely demands a big payoff -- either realization that the protagonist has been suckered into being the victim, or a big smile as he ends up the victor. CROUPIER can't manage to provide either one. It's almost as though Mayersberg got stuck on the film he was writing and pasted on the end of another film entirely.
It's a testimony to how well CROUPIER works for 90% of its running time that the train wreck of a conclusion can't derail the whole film. Director Mike Hodges (probably best-known stateside for the garish 1980 FLASH GORDON) stylishly captures the dim casino milieu and the choreographed moves of the croupiers, while Owen keeps us involved in what will happen to Jack. There are some memorable scenes -- Jack's expert manipulation of a poker game, for instance -- and some provocatively enigmatic holes in Jack's back-story. There are also so many missed opportunities that you just want to shake Mayersberg for his sloppiness. Right up to the moment of the planned casino heist, CROUPIER is well worth recommending. I'd also recommend leaving the theater at that point. Any ending you can come up with in your head is better than the one that ended up on the screen.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 casino-no's: 6.
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