When you think of movies about gambling, you tend to think of films like 'The Sting,' 'The Cooler,' 'Rounders' or 'Casino'.
With the exception of 'Croupier,' a lot of these tend to be set in cities like New York or Las Vegas.
Now 'All Quiet On The Western Front' and 'Conclave' director Edward Berger has given the genre a distinctive Asian flavour.
The glitzy Chinese region of Macau is the setting for the German director's darkly comic psychological thriller 'Ballad of A Small Player' - an adaptation of English author Lawrence Osbourne's 2014 novel.
Starring Colin Farrell, the Dubliner plays an Irish conman posing as an Anglo Irish Lord living the high life in luxury hotels and casinos.
While his real name is Brendan Reilly, he adopts the persona of a washed up peer called Lord Doyle who is on an epic losing streak in Macau's casinos.
Reilly is up to his eyeballs in debt and the game is almost up.
Given three days by the hotel he is living in to repay his six figure debt, he continues to believe his luck will turn and he carries on regardless, stumbling into one casino where Deanie Ip's extremely wealthy woman hands him his ass playing Baccarat.
There he meets Fala Chen's credit broker Dao-Ming who is amused by Reilly's persona with dapper suit, spivvy moustache and lucky gloves that he likes to wear while handling cards.
When one of her clients jumps off the roof of a hotel, Reilly appears to console Dao-Ming.
However he has other motives and is intent on persuading her to give him credit.
Instead Dao-Ming takes Reilly to a harbour temple where a Hungry Ghost Festival is taking place.
Waking up the next morning on a bench, Reilly realises Dao-Ming has gone.
But he also quickly discovers another person, Tilda Swinton's investigator Cynthia Blithe is on his tail and is trying to recoup money he swindled out of an elderly woman in London.
This ramps up the pressure on Reilly as his bad luck continues and he gorges on food and drink, placing huge pressure on his heart.
Going to a fellow conman who owes him money, Alex Jennings' Adrian Lippett, he encounters little sympathy and is dismissively told by the Englishman that he's just an Irish working class lad with a poorly executed fake identity who is really out of his depth.
Teetering on the brink of a major cardiac arrest, Reilly encounters Dao-Ming once more but can she help him get his life back on track and regain some good fortune?
Farrell's character is a haunted soul wandering the neon lit streets of Macau who the hotel employees call a "gweilo" or "white devil".
Underneath the glitzy veneer of the casino city, there's a strong sense of the other world in Rowan Joffe's adaptation of Osbourne's novel.
This makes Berger's movie feel like an Asian fusion of 'Leaving Las Vegas' and 'All of Us Strangers'.
It's a really vibrant and gorgeous looking film, moving at a blistering pace with James Friend's cinematography soaking up the sights and sounds of Macau by day and night and Nick Emerson's film editing rarely putting on the breaks.
Berger shows real energy and enthusiasm in the way he and Friend move the camera - particularly in one sequence where Reilly realises he is being snooped on by Cynthia Blithe and pursues her through a casino.
Farrell is again terrific as a man on the make haunted by the many mistakes he makes and consumed by his addictions.
He is nice complemented by Chen, Ip and Jennings whose character is reptilian and ruthless.
If there's a weak point, it's rather surprisingly Swinton whose character feels a little cartoonish to totally convince.
It also feels a little like an Oliver Stone movie - it's in your face and there isn't a lot of subtlety.
Nevertheless 'Ballad of a Small Player' is an interesting and ambitious movie that will divide audiences.
Whether you like it or not will very much depend on how willing you are to go along with its supernatural leanings.
Even if everything doesn't come off, it's worth the effort.
Personally, I'd rather have a film as imaginative and daring as this than 20 more formulaic superhero movies.
('Ballad of A Small Player' received its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on August 29, 2025 before being made available for streaming worldwide on Netflix on October 29, 2025)
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