“I don’t really feel like it’s going anywhere,” a character in Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter laments at one point, and for a good long time one is inclined to feel this way about the film itself.
Like the titular low-end professional gambler, Schrader here plays the long game, winning as often as not by studying patterns, conservatively abiding by carefully calculated odds and not acting on impulse.
But just when you’ve about given up on the film and its mostly forlorn characters, the writer-director shows his wining hand, the clouds part, the sun shines bright and redemption — creative and moral — is to be had.In different ways, Schrader has frequently explored seriously flawed characters working through a living hell to find a certain
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