In Macau, a gambler down on his luck — self-titled Lord Doyle (Colin Farrell) — is desperate. In attempting to pay off his debts, he attracts the attention of both a private investigator (Tilda Swinton) and Dao Ming (Fala Chen), the woman who may just provide the lifeline he covets.
Edward Berger has been on a roll. After his 2022 film All Quiet On The Western Front earned a Best Picture nomination, his follow-up, the outstanding Conclave, did the same. But Berger won’t have to worry about the pressure of a Best Picture nom this time around: his third in four years, Ballad Of A Small Player, set in the casino capital of Macau, attempts to bring together the searing intensity of All Quiet… with the sly humor of Conclave. It achieves neither.
There’s nothing wrong with an unlikeable gambler as your protagonist. The world would be a poorer place if we didn’t have Adam Sandler’s detestable turn in Uncut Gems. But while that film made us root for its degenerate protagonist’s success, there’s no such feeling in Ballad Of A Small Player.
Edward Berger’s film sags under its own ambition.
That’s not to discredit Colin Farrell as said gambler, who does everything in his power to make you care about his Doyle, particularly in a deeply uncomfortable yet utterly arresting binge-eating scene. But Rowan Joffé’s screenplay, adapting the unwieldy novel of the same name by Lawrence Osborne, brings diminishing results, crafting a world so convoluted — complete with a twist you can see a mile off — that it never gives you a moment to understand Doyle. There’s not enough to him. Everyone else fares even worse. Giving Tilda Swinton such a paper-thin character is unforgivable.
Ballad tries to balance a thoughtful ghost story with a crime caper and a high-stakes gambling narrative, which never converge in effective fashion. For a film with this much talent in front of and behind the camera, you’d expect it to be a lot more interesting, but Berger’s film sags under its own ambition.
Thankfully, Ballad Of A Small Player is breathtaking to look at. The bright lights and larger-than-life feel of Macau are rendered exquisitely through James Friend’s cinematography. The neon-drenched compositions are always inviting, and the vibrant score from Volker Bertelmann is propulsive. While it’s visually dazzling, its overwrought narrative can’t stick the landing.
Though Farrell does great work and the film is a visual feast, Ballad Of A Small Player is an impenetrable story of redemption that’s both too obvious and too baffling.