Believers in luck--good and bad--seem to find that they believe in it a little more when they're in Las Vegas. Luck takes on a near-religious status in Vegas, so much so that (according to legend) casinos actually hire people who have proven bad luck to stand near winner patrons in the hopes that winners will become losers. The professional purveyors of bad luck are called coolers and the fantastic new film by virtually unknown director Wayne Dramer is called THE COOLER.
The loser's loser William H. Macy plays Bernie Lootz, a former small time crook who double-crossed his partner Shelly Kaplow (Alex Baldwin channeling Robert De Niro's CASINO persona) many years ago, and is now paying him back by being a cooler for Shelly's off-the-strip casino, The Golden Shangri-Lah. Bernie, we are told, is the best in the business; nothing goes right in his life. He orders a cup of coffee, and the cream dispenser is always empty when he goes to use it. Then he meets a cocktail waitress named Natalie (Maria Bello from PERMANENT MIDNIGHT and AUTO FOCUS). There's a mixture of pity and curiosity in her eyes, and eventually the two fall in love. This being Bernie's world, complications naturally follow. First in the form of a slick Harvard business grad played by Ron Livingston, who thinks he knows how to update and revamp the casino's image, much to Shelly's resentment. Then comes Bernie's estrange son (Shawn Hatosy) and his pregnant girlfriend (Estella Warren), who need cash in a hurry, but the vibe off these two is all wrong. Finally, there's a problem with Bernie himself. Now that he's in love with someone who loves him back, something in the universe is out of whack, and his powers of ill will toward gamblers seem to disappear. In anything, casino goers seem to have better luck when he's around. Shelly's not too happy about this either, and orders Natalie to leave town.
THE COOLER is a great mix of Vegas folklore, relationship film, character study, and morality tale, all mixed together with some wonderful actors in richly written roles. This is one of those great casinos that is for adults only. Baldwin delivers a quick speech to a hooker trying to generate business in his establishment that blew my mind because of its brush-off attitude and rapid-fire delivery. The people who wrote this film (including director Dramer) seem like they know what they're talking about, they listen to the lingo, observed behavior, they lived the live if only for a moment to inspire this film. Macy's performance isn't quite as pathetic as he can be in films; he's incredibly protective of his small piece of happiness and seems quite desperate to hold onto it. Not surprisingly, violence and death play a part in THE COOLER. It isn't pretty; sometimes it's just plain nasty. Having said that, Macy, Bello, and Baldwin turn in some of the strongest performances I've seen all year and probably deserve serious consideration for Oscar nominations.
Posted by sprokopy at December 18, 2003 02:26 PM