User reviews

I was in the movie theater a few weeks ago and saw a poster for this movie which I had never heard of before. It had Oscar Isaac, Tiffany Haddish, Willam Dafoe, and was produced by Martin Scorsese, how had I not heard of it? Then, a few minutes later, I saw the trailer. It looked interesting, showing an army veteran going into gambling while dealing with his past. It seemed like it would be pretty good.

Key word there is "seemed"

This movie started off pretty well, with Oscar Issac's character playing blackjack while, in typical Scorsese fashion, narrating to us how counting cards works. However, it's only downhill from there. The movie seems to have an identity crisis, with two different plots that never seem to mesh together well. Not to mention the fact that either plot really isn't that interesting. The card playing scenes are the best parts of the movie, but it takes forever to get to them.

(Side Tangent: You gotta love how this movie's about someone who learned how to cheat at blackjack, and then spends the whole movie playing poker. Like, it's literally the title of the movie, how do you mess this up? Tangent over.)

One of the few good things about this movie is the performances. While the script is pretty meh, the cast does the best they can with it, and they do well. I mean, they're basically reading nothing, but at least they read it well.

"The Card Counter" had promise, but almost instantly fell on its face. The slow pacing, the bland story, and the general lack of any real substance to anything happening makes it a rather forgettable movie. There isn't much to gain from watching this, so don't feel bad if you miss it. There's much better things to watch right now.

As a die-hard Schrader-Scorsese-BRMC fan, I was over the moon when this was announced and the trailer had me super hyped.

It starts off really well and then devolves into an incoherent mess of such epic proportions that I kept watching thinking to myself 'There's no way Schrader dropped the ball like that, there's probably some clever twist or reveal that's coming any minute now and all of this disconnected, disjointed excuse of a plot will somehow make perfect sense!'

Nope. Never happened.

If nothing else, it kept getting worse. A sad waste of talent for everyone involved. As others have mentioned, the poker hands were the most intense sequences filmed for this, but hey, fun fact, absolutely zero card counting involved except for a short three minute intro sequence.

This one just never took off.

Right, well the synopsis for the 2021 movie "The Card Counter" wasn't exactly one that had me worked up. But still, the movie had Oscar Isaac in the lead, and it was a movie that I hadn't already seen, so of course I opted to sit down and watch writer and director Paul Schrader's movie.

For me, then "The Card Counter" just didn't cut it. The storyline was just too monotonous and didn't really offer anything interesting or thrilling to watch. And the pacing of the narrative was just too slow paced. So "The Card Counter" was somewhat of an ordeal to sit through.

The acting performances in the movie were fair, though you don't really get to see a whole lot other than people sitting around talking in a bar or sitting at a card table. And that was essentially it. But Oscar Isaac, Tiffany Haddish and Tye Sheridan managed to pull through fair enough. It was nice to see Willem Dafoe in the movie, though he was not given as much screen time as he deserved.

"The Card Counter" came and went without leaving me with a lasting impression. I am sure that there is an audience out there somewhere, given the popularity card games have.

Writer and director Paul Schrader seemed to try to set the stage for various things, but to me it felt like nothing was accomplished, and there were no satisfactory feeling to the culmination of the movie. So it was sort of anti-climatic.

My rating of "The Card Counter" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.

Great cast and acting. Screenwrite not to my liking. Could have been great but leaves you there thinking meh.

Waste of my time to see something new and good on the fleemarket, because this game of cardmanship was a strange trip to the cardcounters wonderland, where the bunny is black and the deck of cards just like a deck of cards, with some segments of flashbacks of bad consiousness and a wrathening sense of revenge, that takes eventually place, but why , how and the outcome of the revenge is left in limbo, the whole film goes actually in limbo if you ask me. Only one aspect can be set in the limelight, very nice filmographical presentation, but thats it...

acting is not bad but boring, story and plot is daft and slow, and if you pay the ticket to become a better pokerplayer, then the book ''poker for dummies '' will teach you more.

Im a grumpy old man with a whole lot of time to spend, therefore im not angry about such foolplay of a movie and it doesnt hurt, but if you measure your life in money per hour, then save yourself from this one.

Definitely one of the worst movies I've seen in cinema, It's a really bad version of taxi driver, boring, empty, shallow and bad ending. 2 hours felt like 6😂😂 My 4/10 is just for the good acting and also the directing was okay.

Really, the movie that could have been and never was.

What could have been... a movie with a good idea but bad execution. With a great lead acting performance, but possibly the worst supporting performances I have ever seen.

Oscar Isaac is excellent, displaying all the depth, emotion and nuance you'd expect from one of the best. His gravitas carries large sections of the film, and maybe could have made the movie good... if not for the issues.

From the moment Haddish is on screen, she sticks out as a horrible sore thumb. She doesn't fit in any part of this world or movie. In a serious movie, she can't stop her stupid goofy smiles (even when people are rude or mean, she just has the same vacant smile as if they just said something really suggestive).

In a realistic movie, she is constantly bombastic & unbelievable. In a movie about interior dialogue & Isaac's face telling us volumes, she just bluntly says the most annoyingly obvious thing. Huge parts of this were the writing, obviously, as every line she said made me cringe. But the lines that weren't half bad she still gives with wooden delivery & the wrong tone every time.

I honestly cannot think of a worse performance by an actress that I have ever seen... and I'm really trying to think of one worse.

How they cast her, or wrote such a horrible part (even the costuming is awful & clashes horribly with everything about the film)... I can't say. And the chemistry she has with Isaac (and his character) is even worse. Their supposed love story is the most not believable storyline I've tried to watch in a very long time, it was so cringe worthy that I actually started looking away every time they were on screen together.

The choice of actor for the kid also seems suspect, as he was pretty terrible every time he spoke too. He seemed bored, disinterested with every line he delivered (including those relating to his supposed anger toward the man he wanted to kill). And the character design didn't do him any favors.

The entire plot about the kid never made much sense. What exactly did Isaac see in this bratty, moody, unlikable soul? He calls him "a good kid" multiple times despite no evidence of this. The kid doesn't even seem to like HIM, or even say thank you, even after he gives him hundreds of dollars in every city they visit.

Also... this kid just drops everything to ride around & do nothing all year with him? Huh?

Aside from these huge character & actor issues... the movie is dull. The pacing is way too slow, we don't find out the true heart of what's wrong with Isaac until about 30-40 minutes in... there's not a tense or interesting scene until the final half hour.

An interesting idea & great performance by Isaac that could have been at least a decent movie.

But it isn't. It isn't decent & you should not watch it, take our word for it.

Oscar Isaac plays a former Army interrogator who is playing with the idea of getting revenge on a cruel man from his past. Isaac is great as always. I can't say the same for Tiffany haddish.

She doesn't quite, but almost ruins every scene she's in. When it comes to Comedy, she's the best. But when it comes to drama, she's too twitchy and doesn't seem to know which way to play a scene. This movie is so low-key that it barely has a heartbeat. What we want to see is a story arc where a man who has come to terms with his bad deeds, slowly convinces himself to do justice to a bad man. But most of the movie concerns itself with his quiet life as a card counter. And his relationship with the young man who is pushing him to violence. It's not bad. But you lose interest about halfway through.

A great actor and a great director but fell completely flat.

As always Oscar acted the hell out of this which was its only good attribute. The movie just went nowhere. I'm all for a slow movie but there still has to be something in it worth watching.

The Card Counter is a movie that starts its journey through tables of different elements and makes us observe every single of it. The presentation thrown at us right in the beginning feels engaging and interesting but with time, the quality starts to feel mild and down-way. The main attraction Oscar Isaac has delivered a performance that's seems good enough but little a bit stiff at some point. Other actors have done reasonable work also. In terms of story there's nothing spicy that blooms from the roots of the plot, it's just one single thing that revolves around and goes on in a repetitive way for almost two hours. Right after the second arc you just want to skip in-between scenes and reach the end. All in all it's a film that will not give you a good appetite, but for once you can watch it or just skip it totally.

I'd rather watch "Dude Where's My Car". Main protagonist is a crap talking weirdo....... I just don't get it!

I'm on my second chance of watching this and nothing is appealing about it.

I'm generally interested in gambling movies (Rounders, Ocean's eleven etc) and this movie started in an interesting manner, but the lack of action and monotonic nature of Oscar Isaac's conversations made me lose interest about 1 hr in, my understanding is also that the ending is not something to look forward to.

I would recommend you skip this one. Exact score: 44 / 100.

For someone who's meticulous with everything he does, quiet and to himself, pinpoint with his routine, to suddenly let a young stranger into his life because he handed him a note with his name and phone number? Lost me there right off. Similar movie I've watched recently called "Hard Eight" was a lot better than this one, and it won't leave you hanging at the end.

Most aspects of this film are very good. The story is barely there, though. The writing/dialog is sometimes very bad. The direction is patchy - good bits but mostly ordinary and sometimes pretty bad. The last shot is... really stupid.

The extreme fisheye lens shots will bend your brain with the warping geometries in the shot.

Overall, I think the phrase "Go to bed, old man" is appropriate. Paul Schrader is accomplished. I think it's time to stop.

I'm not sure what happened with this movie. Oscar Isaac delivered some exceptional acting, but for me the writing, directing and editing were a complete miss.

I didn't feel like as an audience we were encouraged to buy into any of the character motivations. Cirq just seemed to wake up one day and decide to try some kidnap and torture, then puts that on hold to go traipsing around all the crappiest casinos in America.

Filling in the blanks based on what we're shown, I can somewhat understand Will's motives, but he goes to extremes for the kid of someone he didn't even know.

The attraction between Will and Lalinda is completely unbelievable, no chemistry between those 2 at all IMO.

The tone of this movie was bleak without relief, there weren't really any periods of prolonged tension, humour, action or really much of anything to add dynamic and keep the audience engaged.

I expected to like this movie and was ultimately pretty disappointed.

Unfortunatley this was flat and boring. Main character did what he could to save the movie. I kept waiting for a twist or anything exciting to happen.

This movie tried too be deep and dark but honestly felt like meat without flavour. There is no substance. I love Tiffany but she should stick to comedies or stand up.

Really slow, no action, decent acting, but 2 hours of my life i will not get back. I can not see why this movie was even made. Watch another movie if you can.

There was nothing particularly compelling about this movie except perhaps Oscar Isaac's performance (which is always amazing). Still, it held my attention to the extent that I kept hoping there'd be some kind of twist. That something interesting would be revealed which would explain why we'd sat there for two hours watching things unfold. But alas, no. So I feel slightly duped.

And I hate to be so critical, but what was up with Tiffany Haddish's performance? Just no. Her inflection was all wrong so that she sounded like she had been rehearsing for her 6th grade play just moments before in front of a mirror, her gestures and movements (like "drinking" from a glass) seemed cringe-level awkward, and acting next to someone like Oscar Isaac just punctuated her lack of skill.

There didn't seem to be any chemistry between her and Isaac's characters, either -- nor any sense of real connection between Isaac's and Sheridan's characters, for that matter. It was kind of like... is there something more actually happening here? If so, WHAT? Why are we watching this, beyond the obvious part about paying for one's terrible actions in the past? (Which is the only redeemable part of the plot, in my opinion, and why I still give the film a few stars.)

Overall meh. Not the worst film, but certainly far from the best.

I am a fan of Paul Schrader. I think he is an immensely talented writer and filmmaker. There's much of his filmography that I've yet to see, but I do want to see more. But this is the first of his films that I've seen that I did not enjoy very much at all. I may watch it again someday, but the impression of it that I have right now isn't great. The best thing about this movie is Oscar Isaac's performance. He's amazing in this. He fits right in with the mood of Schrader. Perfect casting. Tye Sheridan is okay in this, I guess. Not bad, not great. As far as Tiffany Haddish is concerned, I will say that I felt that she was trying in this, but I still had this nagging feeling that she was miscast. I felt like something was missing with her. She had the look of a woman who does what her character does, but didn't really sell it in my opinion. In all fairness, she's toned down from her usual comedic persona so I guess I just needed to adjust. There's also just not a whole lot to that character. Now going into where I found myself completely frustrated with this movie, this movie essentially feels like two movies vying for attention. For me, the first movie which concerned poker, never seemed to recover after a subplot is introduced. It's like it barely got into that before all this other stuff began. There's a subplot that is in the film concerning events of torture and abuse in a prison camp, and I'll leave it at that. It may not be fair to even suggest that it's a subplot, provided how much dominance it has in the film. But it was less interesting to me than the actual poker elements. It just felt uneven in its execution. I just watched this today not knowing a ton about it other than who was in it, who made it, and that it had something to do with playing cards. Didn't do a deep dive into it beforehand, but enough to know that I may have wanted to see it at some point. So I was thinking that this was going to be typical to Schrader's work, somewhat introspective with its lead character, but within the world of poker. The poker aspect just felt like window dressing for the prison abuse plotline. There are these flashback sequences set inside the prison camp that are thrown in, and although they are very well done, they feel way out of another movie. And I'm sure that if Mr. Schrader were to make a film solely dealing with that subject matter independently, it'd be great. I'm not against multiple storylines in a film, but structure and execution is key. The movie also tends to drag at times, too. It's not even a full 2 hours and it feels longer than it is at times. I would have preferred getting to understand more about the Oscar Isaac character, and have a conflict that didn't contrast so sharply with everything else.