I was in Vegas recently, sitting at the black jack table, and thinking how interesting the pit boss job must be. Seems like a great story waiting to be told. Then I ran across the Croupier. The Cooler may be a similarly close concept, but it's not quite the same.
Croupier isn't exactly what I had in mind. The gambling scene in London is far more depressing, boring, and anti-social than the Vegas strip. I've experienced the non-Vegas gambling first hand. When you're not on the Vegas strip, the clientèle tends to be more desperate, made up of people with a problem, needing to win. Vegas is mostly people with extra cash to throw away looking for some fun.
Back to the movie, Croupier follows a writer, Jack (Clive Owen), who takes a job as a dealer at a casino because his writing career isn't yielding any money. The job leads Jack into many strange acquaintances and noteworthy happenstances. He eventually realizes the job would make great material for a book.
His job as a croupier is far less interesting than I expected, still thinking in my Vegas mindset. The rules of employment at the casino are awfully strict. It seems cruel to discourage coworkers from being friends. They are discouraged from chatting with the patrons in or out of the casino. Sounds like a terrible work environment and weak source of book material, unless you're breaking all of those rules. Which Jack does.
After fraternizing with various coworkers, Jack, breaking more rules, gets friendly with a patron who then hires him to help a plot to rob the casino. He does his part, which he would have done anyway, and takes a beating for it. That's when the movie gets confusing on multiple levels.
Let's start with the robbery of the casino. I think it was thwarted, since Jack's girlfriend tipped the police and the casino seemed to get over it quickly. However, Jack gets the phone call from the woman who brought him into the robbery, and she seems to have gotten away. Added to that the sudden involvement of Jack's dad into the plot. Something was successful, either the robbery or just the woman getting paid by the robbers for the setup. Then there's Jack's girlfriend Marion, who may or may not have been killed as a revenge ploy for the busted robbery. On top of all that intrigue, we have Jack living with Bella after Marion's death. That's a ton of new information thrown at us in the last 15 minutes. I'm still not sure how I feel about it.
Outside the plot there are many interesting elements. Jack narrates the action as if writing his actions, which is a good use of narration. The production is strange, similar to Following. I'm not sure if it's a low-budget thing or a British film thing. Maybe it's a low-budget British film thing. Then there's Alex Kingston, from ER, completely naked for no reason. Random, like most of the movie.
I enjoyed the first 70 minutes enough to overlook the strange, unexplained events of the ending. Because the first part is so good, I'm assuming the end has some meaning I haven't figured out. But it's always possible they just throw some random crap at the page to see what sticks.
Two other random thoughts, proving how useful detail can be:
Love that every dealer in their car is pumping loud dance music.
Love the night of the house party when you can hear women screaming from passionate love making well into the night.
First Viewing: 2+2+2+2+2 = 10