A critique of the 2021 movie The Card Counter. Actual professional gamblers breakdown the details in the movie and tell you what they didn’t get right.
Before we get into some of the finer details of the film The Card Counter and how it could have been better, let us give you a brief on how the movie unfolds (without any spoilers).
The Card Counter stars Oscar Isaac as William, the protagonist. William learned how to count cards during his years in prison. How did he end up in prison, you ask? Well, he was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. William took the fall for the abuse and exploitation of prisoners at Abu Gharib.
As a viewer, you already feel bad for William who had to spend many years in prison for no fault of his own. Thankfully, William was pretty strong headed and made it through his prison tenure in one piece. As he narrates during the opening scenes, he supposedly liked the routine of prison – the same clothes, the same little prison cell, the same schedule every day, the same smells and the same faces. To pass time, he took to reading books and played around with a deck of cards.
After having served his prison sentence, he is and he uses his card counting skills to win at Blackjack. However, he is not too greedy and keeps his wins pretty modest so as to not trigger any suspicion. Being able to win a few hundred bucks each time and he is pretty content with what he has going. That is until a friend, La Linda (Played by Tiffany Haddish), starts pushing him to join forces with a financier and scale his gambling up. She encourages him to move from petty Blackjack wins at low and medium stake tables to big league poker.
At first, William shrugs off the idea and wants to keep his nose clean. However, his fate takes a U-turn when he meets Cirk (played by Tye Sheridan). Cirk’s father too was a fall guy for the abuse that occurred in Abu Gharib and imprisoned wrongfully. Cirk is out to get revenge against those that were actually at fault. Major Goro (played by William Dafoe), was the man that actually led the abuse and trained (and forced) lower ranking authorities to abuse the prisoners in the name of interrogation techniques.
While understanding the frustration and vengeances Cirk holds in his heart against Major Goro, William also knows that revenge will not bring any good to Cirk and wants to side track him from his plan against Goro, who is a security consultant supposedly assisting casinos to protect their customers.
William enters the world of professional high-stakes poker, and that’s when things start to get interesting.
What We Liked
Now that you understand the synopsis of the story and how the movie is setup to unfold, let’s take a look at what could have been made better.
While The Card Counter has a great story, with an accomplished cast and certainly makes for a decent watch, unless you actually know a thing or two about counting cards it might not be liked by the less-knowledgeable viewers. What we did like is the fact that it actually has a good storyline and is thought-provoking when it comes to knowing what is right and wrong.
What We Didn’t Like
For starters, a movie about counting cards should get the actual ‘counting cards’ part right. Case in point, within the opening minutes, when William is giving the viewers a ‘card counting in a nutshell’ explanation, he states that the house has a 1.5% advantage in Blackjack. Any real card counter would know that it would be hard to beat the house with a margin that wide, even if you were counting cards. A proper card counter would stick to a Blackjack game where the house edge is 0.5% at most.
Also, in the opening scenes, William pulls off a move that any card counter wouldn’t be caught dead making. He doubles a 9 against the dealer’s 10. This is a definite no no even to someone who understands the very basics of Blackjack strategy.
What’s more, the whole “I don’t get caught by the casino for counting cards because I win only small amounts and the casino does not mind” is completely false. Card counting simply doesn’t work that way. You can lose plenty while counting cards, but you can play at a slight advantage and may win 55% of the time. So, whether you win big or small, or even lose big or small, if the casino knows you can count cards and play at an advantage, they’re going to kick you out. They prefer players who aren’t great at the game for obvious reasons.
Unfortunately, the movie is riddled with quite a few card counting misconceptions. Plus, any card counter worth their salt would never sit at a Blackjack pays 6-5 table. The movie is decent in terms of the plot, characters and being somewhat intriguing. However, it falls short in many other areas, particularly its unrealistic action scenes. It can also be extremely annoying for every Blackjack player who knows the game like the back of his hand – pun kind of intended!