The grind is real, and Edward Berger is on it. Fresh off the awards press for the honest-to-God good film of 2024 Conclave, Berger hits the ground again with Ballad of a Small Player, another film adaptation of a novel and yet another book adaptation yet a film that doesn’t feel like the expected follow up. It’s unfair to string Conclave’s greatness, which I have marketed to friends and family as a fun example of workplace cattiness, to Berger’s future projects, especially one that does feel like a risk. Still, Conclave was a risk taker to the success of All Quiet on the Western Front, and it certainly paid off.

A gamble on a Colin Farrell vehicle is not a bad shot. Character portraits in the Netflix roster, like Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths and Nyad, have their flares before dissipating into the darkness, and I sorta expect the same fate for Ballad. However, I’ll make the case that Ballad is still a redeemable watch, mostly on the fact that its vibrancy makes it stick out from other movies this year.

Farrell is Lord Doyle, a self-classified “high roller” who is on his last legs (even so far as probably borrowing others’ limbs to carry him to the next gambling table). With a vast mountain of debt, Doyle is stuck in the “earn an inch, take a whole damn foot” cycle in which he wins a little money, gambles it all, and loses a lot more. Seeking anonymity and refuge in Macau, Doyle understands that he’s referred to as a gwai lo, or ghost, a local term for white people. But Doyle is introduced as someone who is nearly at death’s door. He only thinks about making more money, squeezing by the financial payback demands from the hotel manager and the eventual debt collector Cynthia (Tilda Swinton). Escaping everyone that he owes money feels like trying to make a living in quicksand. Even the costuming makes it known; though Doyle wears bold-colored blazers and his lucky yellow gloves to the casinos, he blends in with his environment like he is becoming more transparent.

He meets loan shark Dao-Ming (Fala Chen) at a game of baccarat, and even though she can sniff the man’s weaseling maneuvers from paying for drinks, she finds a kinship in each other. Both characters are running away from something and find some guise of protection in what they do — Doyle in monetary despair and Dao-Ming in others’ monetary despair — that they sorta feel some tied together for the last stretches of life. Maybe it’s romantic, but maybe it’s also that feeling where you’re on a sinking boat with a stranger and neither of you have life jackets.

Dao-Ming’s sudden disappearance isn’t the marker of Doyle’s adventure, especially since she weaves in and out until the end’s reveal of her meaning. But she somehow pushes Doyle’s nugget of empathy inside his guts as he traverses Macau for more money and more activities that get him into trouble, thinking (perhaps falsely) that he can make enough money to get them both out of their situations. There are a few movies that portray a gambling addiction, but its behavior and delusions will feel familiar to any story dealing with substance use disorder, uber-capitalism, pick your poison. I can’t say that I was particularly surprised at how unlikable Doyle is, or the film’s portrayal of Oriental mysticism (which I guess sorta looks okay if you look at it a certain angle).

With all that being said, Ballad of a Small Player gets credit for being one of the first movies that I’ve seen this year where I can actually, like, see it. Much kudos to James Friend, who had won an Oscar for Best Cinematography for All Quiet on the Western Front and reconnects with Berger for a banger of brightness. I can see a bit of an influence from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, where the color palette is complimented by its environment: yellow haze from the Nevada sun, the pink hues from the salaciousness of the Vegas Strip. The interior of Ballad is as richly dull as it could get for lonely souls, but the exterior locations of greens, blues, and reds exert a livelihood that Doyle is surrounded in but can’t seem to quite incorporate into. Texturally, I’ve never seen a man look so sweaty as Doyle in a long while, and the viciousness of his complexion during a scene when he gorges on both lobster and cake in the same swallows certainly and unfortunately makes me feel like I am there, about to puke along his side.

For many people, Berger’s follow up to Conclave might be as puzzling as Doyle’s choice in baccarat, a game based on chance. But it helps visualize the idea of a dead man walking, who has little skill outside of blind boldness to dedicate anything more than a single draw of cards to give him a little morsel of willpower to live. But I have no doubt that Berger has a deck of cards up his sleeve, and he isn’t running out anytime soon.

Ballad of a Small Player
2025
dir. Edward Berger
101 min.

Now streaming on Netflix