Nothing succeeds like excess in Ballad of a Small Player, a stylish but ultimately silly thriller driven by Colin Farrell’s powerhouse star performance as a self-deluded swindler, gambling addict and alcoholic rogue on the run from his murky past in the glamorously sleazy neon inferno of Macau, Las Vegas of the East. German director Edward Berger’s unlikely sequel project to his feted Oscar-winners, All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) and Conclave (2024), is another lively literary adaption, albeit one that plays much more as pulpy entertainment than its predecessors. Deep down, this is a pretty shallow movie.
Based on Lawrence Osborne’s critically acclaimed 2013 novel of the same name, Ballad of a Small Player is scripted by Rowan Joffe, a writer-director in his own right on big and small screen (Tin Star, Before I Go to Sleep). After earning mixed reviews at its Telluride and Toronto premieres, this Netflix production makes its European festival debut this week in San Sebastián. A short cinema run is planned next month, followed by streaming from October 29.
A dapper dresser with the dandyish pencil moustache of a 1950s matinee idol, Farrell’s aristocratic anti-hero Lord Freddy Doyle puts a contemporary twist on classic Graham Greene archetypes, all those boozy expats starring into the spiritual abyss in some faraway colonial outpost. Waking up with a weapons-grade hangover in his trashed hotel suite to face another day of huge debuts and unpaid bills, Doyle repeatedly assures himself he is just one lucky card game away from the big win that will solve all his problems. The trouble is, his creditors no longer believes this high-wire bravado act, and are threatening to call the police.
Minor spoiler alert: it quickly becomes clear that Doyle is not some louche English playboy, but is in fact a working-class Irish con man called Brendan Reilly who sweet-talks old ladies out of their life savings. Breathing down his neck is nervy British private investigator Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton), who offers him a last-ditch deal to pay back the stolen loot or face arrest.
The only flicker of hope in the purgatorial prison of high-stakes addiction that Doyle/Reilly has built for himself is kindly casino worker Dao Ming (Fala Chen), who offers him one last shot at redemption for obscure motives of her own. Pulling him out of his self-destruct spiral, she spirits him away to her floating hide-out in the tranquil Hong Kong backwater of Lamma Island, where a wild stroke of luck becomes a definitive reckoning with his own demons.
In stylistic terms, Ballad of a Small Player plays a supremely confident hand, so full of swagger and bravado that it takes a good hour to reveal it isn’t really holding any high-value cards. Berger and cinematographer James Friend (who also shot All Quiet on the Western Front) capture the gaudy, grungy, glitzy spectacle of Macau with great visual brio, percussive editing and a sharp eye for colourful urban tableaux.
Farrell gives a reliably compelling, layered performance full of sweaty close-ups and suave evasions, by turns charmingly cocksure and painfully vulnerable, switching accents and registers between scenes. There are fireworks galore here, but thankfully Farrell sticks to the golden rule: however wild the role, however gonzo the character, never go full Nicolas Cage.
Alas, Chen is stuck with a fairly one-dimensional Oriental Pixie Dream Girl part while Swinton gives us another of her mannered, bad-haired, aggressively “normal” late-career caricatures, once more begging the question whether she has ever actually met any normal people. All the main characters feel like purely cinematic confections, pale copies of familiar screen archetypes, dampening any emotional engagement. Volker Bertelmann’s strident score does not help, insistent and bombastic and subtle as a shovel in the face.
A riotous rollercoaster ride, with salvation on one side and damnation on the other, Ballad of a Small Player works best in its sardonic slapstick-noir scenes, especially when the wily Doyle/Reilly justifies his own sins by confronting friends and foes alike over their own greed, hypocrisy and small-minded ambitions. A final shift in narrative momentum, where droll cynicism about the human condition gives way to corny shock twists, cheesy epiphanies and silly supernatural subplots, lacks the same authentic bite. Berger’s superior exercise in deluxe trash works as a glossy guilty pleasure for most of its runtime, but this is a minor work for both director and star.
Director: Edward Berger
Screenwriter: Rowan Joffe, based on the Lawrence Osbourne novel
Cast: Colin Farrell, Fala Chen, Tilda Swinton, Deanie Ip, Alex Jennings
Camera: James Friend
Editor: Nick Emerson
Music: Volker Bertelmann
Producers: Mike Goodridge, Edward Berger, Matthew James Wilkinson
Production companies: Good Chaos (UK), Nine Hours (Germany), Stigma Films (UK)
Venue: San Sebastián International Film Festival (Official Selection)
World sales: Netflix
In English, Cantonese
104 minutes
