Ballad of a Small Player review – Colin Farrell’s gamble doesn’t pay off | Films | Entertainment
Swiss-Austrian director Edward Berger stormed into Hollywood with his Oscar-winning war epic All Quiet on the Western Front.
It wasn’t long before he followed up with his BAFTA-winning papal thriller, Conclave, which saw a strong resurgence of interest around the time of Pope Francis’ death.
With such a strong track record, film fans have been eager to catch his latest adaptation, Ballad of a Small Player, starring Colin Farrell and Tilda Swinton.
The Netflix psychological thriller follows the Irish star’s unnamed sleazy crook, parading himself in the glitzy casinos of Macau, as the red velvet-encrusted, pencil-moustached English aristocrat Lord Doyle.
All Quiet’s Academy Award-winning cinematographer, James Friend, beautifully captures the colourful, yet sordid, Chinese Vegas world in all its garish elegance from the outset.
This promising opening follows Farrell’s sweaty, desperate drunk, avoiding his creditors, trying his yellow-gloved hand time and again at the next baccarat table, while conning good champagne out of the bars before doing a runner.
The hustler has only a few days to get lucky and pay back the six-figure sum owed to a casino before they call the police. Meanwhile, Swinton’s frumpy PI is chasing him down for the money he swindled to come gamble in Macau in the first place. There’s something of a fun conman caper here, mixed in with the tragic emptiness of Farrell’s character, desperately trying to fill the hole of his inner tumour by gorging excessively on opulent buffets, washed down with glass after glass of Cristal. Yet the actor’s impressive acting chops cannot save Berger’s disappointing latest, as the film soon loses its way.
Fala Chen’s leading lady, Dao Ming, plays a mysterious role in the film that soon turns into a twist you can see coming a mile off. In the end, the stylish framing is let down by its lack of substance, which ultimately leaves the viewer as unsatisfied as Lord Doyle. Much like the casinos of Macau, much was promised at the start, but little was delivered by the end.
Ballad of a Small Player is streaming on Netflix from Wednesday.
