Colin Farrell can't save gambling stinker 'Ballad of a Small Player' from going bust

“Ballad of a Small Player” is manager Edward Berger’s 3rd movie successful 4 years. The archetypal two, “All Quiet connected the Western Front” and “Conclave” earned 17 Oscar nominations betwixt them, including champion representation nods for both.

You’d deliberation that would marque “Ballad of a Small Player” thing of an lawsuit or, astatine the precise least, eagerly anticipated by radical who bask movies with a straightforward directorial style, keen attraction to accumulation and costume plan and the benignant of booming people that volition spike your tinnitus for days aft you permission the theater.

And those Berger hallmarks are surely connected show successful the caller one, a play astir a dandy named Lord Doyle, a down-and-out con antheral and gambling addict connected the brink of a breakdown successful the kitschy gaming hub of Macau. What’s missing, crucially, is simply a crushed for the assemblage to attraction astir this narcissist, adjacent though Colin Farrell employs each instrumentality successful his acting arsenal to triumph you over. And if Farrell, an histrion I’d travel conscionable astir anyplace (except possibly past Macedonia), can’t marque you consciousness for this guy, you cognize “Ballad” has problems that are extended arsenic the bully lord’s unpaid edifice bill.

We archetypal spot Doyle, whose title, arsenic you’d astir apt guess, is self-bequeathed, done a reflection disconnected his stainless alloy country work tray. (Mirror images are employed often successful the film.) Doyle’s opulent Macau edifice suite is successful disarray and helium isn’t successful overmuch amended shape. But determination is enactment to beryllium done, truthful helium puts connected his greenish velvet suit, his fortunate Savile Row gloves and tries to retrieve wherever helium stashed his 1 past rotation of bills. In a voice-over, Doyle tells america he’s a “high roller connected a slippery slope.”

“Here, I hardly exist,” helium continues, calling himself a gweilo, a Cantonese word for a overseas shade cloaked successful invisibility. “Here, I tin beryllium whoever I privation to be.”

Doyle is intelligibly delusional. Cloaked successful invisibility? This peacock stands retired adjacent successful Macau, a metropolis that embraces garishness astir arsenic overmuch arsenic it does airy pollution.

Berger plays the opening conception of the movie arsenic farce, but past switches the tone, seeming to recognize that helium doesn’t person the installation oregon involvement successful heightened comedy. He’s much comfy playing it large and trying to make an operatic play astir a hopeless man, consumed by greed and a gnawing hunger that has rotted his soul, looking for 1 past score. It’s a movie we’ve seen countless times, though not successful Macau, and Berger banks connected the determination to make shiny, stylized images that mightiness distract you from the acquainted emptiness of the story.

For a moment, it seems Doyle’s luck mightiness alteration erstwhile helium meets Dao Ming (Fala Chen), a casino worker whose occupation is to widen lines of recognition to addicts similar Doyle, enabling them to autumn adjacent much profoundly into debt. But her bosom isn’t successful her enactment and for reasons we ne'er buy, she takes pity connected Doyle, recognizing successful him a “lost soul.”

“It’s ne'er excessively precocious to change,” she tells him. (Has she seen his edifice room?) “Ballad,” written by Rowan Joffé, adapting Lawrence Osborne’s vivid 2014 novel, depicts Dao Ming arsenic a chap ghost, though successful her case, the favoritism mightiness beryllium rather literal. The movie keeps you guessing connected that count, arsenic did the book.

There’s an further pistillate successful Doyle’s life, Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton), a impermanent staying astatine his edifice who helium spies taking his representation for reasons Doyle tin lone presume aren’t good. She’s different quality with a slippery individuality and Swinton, ever entertaining, has immoderate amusive with her, embracing the movie’s over-the-top aesthetic by donning kooky pinkish eyeglasses and sporting an electroshock hairstyle.

With “All Quiet connected the Western Front” and “Conclave,” Berger showed himself to beryllium a canny crowdpleaser, susceptible of jumping genres and drafting retired good enactment from his leads. Here, helium seems arsenic mislaid successful the agleam lights arsenic Doyle, piling connected disorienting camera angles and an overcooked dependable plan to make an unfocused fever imagination astir idiosyncratic excess that exhausts the humanity from its story. It’s an overload of overkill, yet arsenic tedious and bare arsenic the past time of a 72-hour travel to Vegas erstwhile the novelty has worn disconnected and you conscionable privation to spell location and sleep.