It’s fitting that The Card Counter’s protagonist’s last name is Tell. Not because he has one (as played by Oscar Isaac, he doesn’t have a poker face so much as he is perennially inexpressive), but because writer/director Paul Schrader (unusually phoning it in) lazily favors ‘telling’ over 'showing.’
One would think that the dude who’s written or co-written arguably the top four Martin Scorsese films could come up with something better than a glorified poker tutorial, complete with visual aids.
To put it in perspective, consider Robert Altman’s infinitely superior California Split, in which “We don’t need to know anything about gambling to understand the odyssey
the protagonists undertake to the tracks, to the private poker parties, to bars, to Vegas, to the edge of defeat and to the scene of victory. Their compulsion is so strong that it carries us along” (Ebert).
But there is no compulsion in The Card Counter; Bill Tillich, aka William Tell, is not a gambler out of weakness (like Jimmy Caan in the also superior The Gambler), but out of convenience: he is good at it – to the point that not only is he debt-free, but can afford the luxury of paying others’ debts. He’s unqualified to do anything else, but then there’s nothing he’s interested in doing.
According to Bill, “The smartest bet for a rookie is red/black at roulette… You win, you walk. You lose, you go. It’s the only smart casino bet.“ It may be smart, but hardly riveting stuff. Who could possibly ever be interested in the story of a gambler who knows when to fold'em?
Thus, Schrader resorts to stealing a page out of 80s pro wrestling’s playbook: namely, Middle East-related cheap heat in the form of an inexplicable subplot dealing with the torture and abuse of Abu Ghraib prisoners in Iraq. Now, there’s a gamble that doesn’t even come close to paying off.
