Croupier DVD > Reviews > Win without gambling

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Loved it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Outstanding
Special Effects	Standard
How does it compare to similar films?	Outstanding

Advantages:	Wonderful .  A must see .  Top class acting, very good directing and a stay on track plot .
Disadvantages:	Erm .  .  .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Croupier is a film that tries to be clever.

I imagine you’ll be just as surprised as I was to discover that Croupier is actually a clever film. I gather that it had to fight an uphill battle against doubtful Hollywood funding agencies to be made in the first place, I’m glad it won.

Hopefully Croupier will be the film that’ll lift Clive Owen (Jack) up to the levels of limelight he deserves. Croupier might also be the film that justifies Kate Hardie’s (Bella) apparent obsession with taking her top off. By “justify” I mean “do it and still produce an intellectual film”.

A few people walked out of the cinema. I suspect they were stupid. Croupier is full of surprises and tension; not the sort of tension that has you on the edge of your seat or hiding behind your hands but the other sort of suspense – the very much more refined and rare variety. Jack narrates the film in the Third Person. It is an unusual touch but it works very well. It is this outwards-in vantage point that you’ll find yourself in when it comes to the cinematic suspense. “Jack wondered whether he would get away with it,” thinks Jack for your benefit. Manx wondered how on earth anyone could walk out of a film like this.

I’ll keep the overview of the plot really simple since it’s important not to give any of it away. Jack’s a writer who’s suffering from Writer’s Block. His father finds him a job as a croupier in a casino on the other side of town. His girlfriend (Gina McKee) would rather live with a writer than a croupier but she hangs around since she does love Jack. He manages to find encouragement for his new job from the other casino staff and the some of the regular players. The rules of being a Croupier, though, disallow relationships with other casino staff or even basic friendships with the players. If a casino player was to encounter Jack in the street Jack would have to pretend not to recognise them. Alex Kingston [girlie] was rather good as the South African Yani who starts to visit the casino.

Right, that’s it. There are, of course, some twists and adventure in the plot but the film isn’t really plot heavy. It is, in fact, rather plot simple. What makes Croupier as engaging as it really is are the ways the characters grow and develop. The risk is that you can’t relate to anyone at all in the entire film – Jack is especially alien. I certainly found myself relating to Jack though and I’m not all that alien (Well, maybe a little). The trick is that as Jack begins to explore his own Identity through the eyes of “Jack-the-Writer” and “Jack-the-Croupier” you find yourself getting sucked in along side.

Mike Hodges is to thank for much of this brilliance. As the director he held the power of make or break (although the character performances of the actors, especially Clive Owen held a lion share of the success) and he rose to the challenge wonderfully. If you’ve seen Get Carter by Hodges then you’ll know something of his style.

I suspect most of the budget was spent on the stages. The scenes were wonderfully framed. The camera angles held so much power in the film; it’s the camera angles which express the them and us points of view through the movie. It can be hard to watch Jack as he deals the cards thinking about what’s going on the in casino because he’s narrating in the Third Person. So, for example, you might be watching Jack on screen and hear him think about action that you can’t see… or, you might be watching the action and be presented with “Jack wondered why such cheating was allowed.” The important thing with the camera angles was to include the right amount of information from the busy casino scenes without it all becoming a chaotic mess. The film starts strongly on this point; the Croupier had achieved his goal, he could no longer hear the sound of the ball. Hodges is able to filter our senses for us and do so in a way that was +entirely+ in character with the themes of the motion picture. Nearly as important as the angles was the auspicious and appropriately subtle use of cutting. Generally big budget films have a lot of cuts in them – they can afford to do so and its easier to keep our attention, its rare to find yourself looking at the same scene for as much as a minute in most Hollywood films. There are scenes in Croupier when the cutting is as fast (not that you’d notice) as you’d expect from an action movie and yet there are long periods of single camera shots as well.

Croupier is well worth watching. It’s in the cinemas now (21st June, 2001) even if its not made Ciao’s Top 10 Cinema category nor the biggest promotional poster space outside the cinema houses.