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Croupier

Threat advisory: High - High risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

Life's a gamble.

Jack Manfred (Clive Owen), though an aspiring writer, is suffering from writer's block and gets a job as a croupier to support himself. Knowing the dangers of gambling, Jack is adamant about remaining a professional outsider but the temptations of the game swallow him deeper than he could ever have anticipated, in this complex thriller set in London's gambling world.

Also starring Kate Hardie as Bella, Alex Kingston as Jani de Villiers, Gina McKee as Marion, Nicholas Ball as Jack's father, Kate Fenwick as Cloë, Nick Reding as Max and Simon Fisher-Turner as the ironic punter. Written by Paul Mayersberg, directed by Mike Hodges.

Cinematic intelligence sources

Awards and film festivals:

Cinematic Intelligence Agency Trenchcoat Awards 2002

Studios and distributors:

Shooting Gallery

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

Lock, stock and two smoking barrels... without the overt clever pretensions. Clive is a much more mild mannered man than Nick Moran and has far fewer ambitions. He also has something of a "normal" life, at least one in which you might possibly imagine yourself. After all, how many people do you know named "Hatchet Harry", let alone do business with him? It's that sense of normalcy that brings Croupier down from the "Sparkling, glitzy, action crim flick" shelf and put into the "Guy who thinks he knows a lot being taken in by others who know a lot more" bin.

For once, and I have a lot of movie-going to draw on here, the voice-over (v/o) is warranted and appropriate. Jack is writing a book. You cannot read the book in a movie because the font is too small, so you either show the action in a flashback-type other world, or you have someone read it out aloud. Croupier does both and succeeds. The best are the casino scenes where Jack is sizing up the punters: from each observation you get an extraordinary sense of both Jack's character and the punter's. It's a great way to show someone's intimate thoughts and develop sympathy for them.

Jani is perfectly cast as the slightly too old, slightly too eager South African temptress. She eplays the character on so many levels that it's almost frightening. Nicholas is so completely unsympathetic that you begin to wonder where character ends and characterisation begins. There are many people who are constantly playing the game, for whom winning is not so important as cheating. It makes you wonder about your post-catholic morality.

If you want a nice, dark drama with more than a couple of twists, Croupier will do you well, but be warned that there's no gangsta gunplay and not a single use of the term mother-fucker.

FYI: To answer the question asked in the film, a Croupier is an attendant who collects and pays the money at a gaming table or someone who at a public dinner sits at the lower end of the table as assistant chairman. It's from the French, originally meaning someone who rides behind on the croup of another's horse (The Macquarie Dictionary). The croup or rump lies between the loin and the tail (when looking from the side or back, it is the highest point of the hindquarters) so a Croupier is someone who is riding your horse with you, sitting behind the saddle. While this has almost nothing to do with playing Blackjack, I am, if course, inordinately clever, and figure that the card-dealing Croupier is so named because of the curved shape of a blackjack table, which vaguely resembles a saddle in profile.