GAMBLING MOVIE

Synopsis

The Cooler is Bernie Lootz, a loser who has made his career out of his contagious bad luck. The Cooler plies his trade, working on the floor of Las Vegas’ aging Shangri-La casino, an old-school “gambler’s casino,” a dinosaur in the shadow of the new Strip and its theme-park attractions.

In this purgatory of bright lights and chirping slots, Bernie drifts from table to table, his bad karma cooling one gambler’s lucky streak after another. Like an inmate serving time, Bernie has been here for years, paying off a nasty gambling debt he owes to the Shangri-La’s slippery Director of Operations, Shelly Kaplow. Bernie is just days away from fulfilling his debt when he meets Natalie, a new cocktail waitress at the Shangri-La.Natalie sweeps Bernie off his feet, and after a night of much-needed raucous sex, Bernie is in love.

When Natalie starts to love him back, Bernie’s luck starts to change. Feeling good for the first time in years, Bernie can’t wait to leave Las Vegas and move on with his life with the woman of his dreams. But will Shelly let his most valued asset leave so easily? Moderately entertaining but leaving no lasting impression, Wayne Kramer’s The Cooler is one of those films that just simply comes and goes. The movie’s a bit darker, and somewhat more intense, than I had anticipated, but ultimately it’s fairly hollow in the center.

Fans of Las Vegas and casinos will derive a few thrills from the movie, and a particularly spirited (albeit one-note) performance by Alec Baldwin is reason enough to give The Cooler a mild recommendation. The Shangri-La casino is old school Vegas. With no roller coasters, shopping malls or gondola rides to be found anywhere on the premises, Bernie Lootz (William H. Macy) makes the rounds at the casino working as a “cooler” for his old friend who runs the establishment, Shelly Kaplow (Alec Baldwin).

This job entails going from table to table where gamblers are on a winning streak and putting an end to their good fortune purely by being in the vicinity. You see, Bernie is thought to be the unluckiest person in Vegas, and bad vibes follow him wherever he goes. That changes when Bernie meets the Shangri-La’s new cocktail waitress, Natalie (Maria Bello). The aggressive Natalie charms Bernie right into bed, and the man falls in love before he knows what hit him. But, true to form, Bernie’s timing couldn’t be worse — he has planned to leave the Shangri-La in a few days, as he’ll have worked off his debt to Shelly.

Shelly, on the other hand, is desperate to retain Bernie’s services, especially in light of the fact that the owners of the casino have sent in a young businessman, Buddy Stafford (Ron Livingston), to modernize the Shangri-La in order to make it more competitive with the other new school casinos. But Bernie’s developing a professional problem — the more he falls in love with Natalie, the less effective his “cooling” is. Soon, he’s bringing nothing but good luck to the Shangri-La’s ecstatic customers.

Bernie’s plans to skip town are further complicated by the arrival of his estranged son (Shawn Hatosy) and his pregnant girlfriend (Estella Warren), who get into some unexpected but deadly serious hot water with Shelly. William H. Macy has played the sympathetic loser several times in his career, and here he treads familiar ground.

The one wrinkle to the role is that he spends a fair amount of time in steamy sex scenes with Maria Bello, who hits the right notes as the rough-around-the-edges but still dignified Natalie. It is Baldwin though who brings an absolute ferociousness to the dangerous Shelly. Sure, the character is written with too much of a singular purpose, but the actor makes Shelly a dominant, threatening presence every time he’s on screen.

Frank Hannah and Wayne Kramer’s script is all conventional, surface level twists and turns, many of which you can see coming a mile away. The subplot involving Bernie’s son and his hairy predicament is sloppily abandoned after reaching a dramatic crescendo, and a few other supporting characters are touched upon too briefly. The script is stuffed thick with various elements (including some Casino-esque violence), which just aren’t proportioned effectively. Kramer is able to visually create the atmosphere of the Shangri-La — a decaying relic lost among the posh hotels and casinos that have been sprouting up in Vegas for the past two decades (not to mention many other places). His camera work starts off flashy, but settles down enough to not be distractingly obtrusive.

Overall, The Cooler feels a bit too commonplace — really, you’ve seen this all many times before (and done better), so if originality is a priority, then there’s not much reason to see this film. But if you’re interested in the world it’s set in and can tolerate the familiarity, The Cooler, despite its occasional lack of inspiration, isn’t a bad way to spend 100 minutes of your life.

Filed under: Gambling Movie