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CROUPIER
4/10
UK
1999
director : Mike Hodges
script : Paul Mayersberg
cinematography : Michael Garfath
editing : Les Healey
music : Simon Fisher-Turner
lead actors : Clive Owen, Gina McKee, Alex Kingston, Kate Hardie
91-94 minutes
There
probably is a decent movie somewhere within Croupier, it’s
just that Hodges and scriptwriter Mayersberg (the film is, unusually,
presented as being ‘by’ both of them) either lack the skills to bring
it out or, worse, have ‘higher’ aspirations.
When
cash-strapped writer Jack Manfred (Owen), takes a croupier job at a middle-ranking
London casino, the late hours imperil his relationship with live-in girlfriend
Marion (McKee). It doesn’t help that his eye wanders towards both tough-cooking
casino-colleague Bella (Hardie) and Jani (Kingston), a chic gambler who
shares his South African background. When Janni suggests he join her scheme
to rob the casino, straight-arrow Jack resists – but his fictional ‘alter
ego’ Jake, has no such qualms…
The
first half is strong on the behind-the-scenes casino stuff: it’s a pleasure
to observe Jack nimbly stack chips, deal cards and cope with difficult
customers. Everything is in place for what we hope will be a twisty thriller
of femmes fatales and David Mamet-type cons. While the second half
makes some lame attempts at noir tensions, they’re only as background
for a half-baked psychological character study. As Jack/Jake’s identity
fragments, the various subplots snarl into a ball of confusion. Clarity
was never Hodges’ strong suit – Get Carter, for all its strengths,
makes an essentially straightforward story borderline incomprehensible
– and here it’s compounded by major script problems.
By
making the ‘hero’ a writer continually commenting on the ‘action,’ the
movie tries to get away with serving up some desperately thin characters
trading truly awful dialogue. Marion: “What am I to you?” Jack: “You’re
my conscience.” Later, she expresses surprise and mild displeasure that
he’s decided to stop being a dyed-blond. “It’s just hair!” he fumes.
The
film-makers’ would presumably claim Croupier as representing Jack’s
flawed, egocentric consciousness, his view of the people around him as
two-dimensional characters. It’s a cheap trick to play the post-modernism
card - but such license comes at a price. The payoff must be worthwhile,
either dramatically or psychologically, and Croupier fails on both
levels. We’re a long way from the sustained observational depth of Paul
Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight, while Croupier’s analysis
of writing and gambling look pitifully weak alongside, say, Jonathan Rendall’s
harrowing quasi-novel Twelve Grand.
While
the movie is full of perplexing gaps and inconsistencies (Marion appears
to have left Jack for another bloke, then suddenly it turns out she hasn’t)
the final twenty minutes are plain laughable, with Jack somehow getting
his book (‘I, Croupier’) published anonymously. A hardback, its
cover proclaims “No.1 International Bestseller” – such a book being a
global smash is implausible enough, but it’s doubly unlikely that it would
(a) come out anonymously, and (b) reach bestseller status before
UK hardback publication.
Whatever
skills Hodges once had, meanwhile, seem to have deserted him since Carter.
Croupier looks and feels drab and dated, with an amateur-hour editing
lapse when Jack and insomniac Janni are in bed together and she reveals
her money worries. Such shoddy work behind the camera places an unreasonable
burden on Owen, as the only character who isn’t an insultingly underwritten
cipher. The women come off particularly badly, with Kingston’s strong
work as Janni (she has a great moment when Jack approaches her and she
looks as if he might either kiss her or hit her) criminally wasted. But
Owen can’t overcome the script’s essential problem of how we’re supposed
to react to Jack: is he just an uncaring louse? A self-obsessesed fantasist?
Are we supposed to laugh at the ludicrous Curiosity-Killed-The-Cat
hat he wears while ‘writing?’
We
have to wonder if this Manfred (a reference to Manfred Mann?) is even
any good as a writer. If his toneless, droning voiceover is any guide,
the answer is no. So are we supposed to believe anything of what we see
or hear? In the right hands, these questions might add to the intrigue
– here they’re just a smokescreen for Mayersberg and Hodges’ inadequacies.
If they can’t make a decent thriller, that’s no crime. But there’s
so much pretension flying around that one suspects the pair consider themselves
above the genre – if so, that’s rich. Croupier is just hair.
20th
July, 2001
(seen
Jul-17-01, UGC Middlesbrough)
by Neil
Young
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