Kill James Bond! - S3E16.5 The Card Counter [Preview]

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

Massive content warnings here for discussion of torture, the iraq war, racism, sexual assault. This week, November and Devon jointly chose for us all to talk about a little movie about Poker and Forgiveness. And the Iraq war. And torture. ------ FREE PALESTINE Hey, Devon here. Give money to people crowdfunding for passage out of Rafah first and foremost, then purchasing ESIMs, then these links if you feel you need a big name attached to the fund to trust it. Please don't only donate money. You have to do other things now. palestineaction.org/donate https://www.map.org.uk/donate/donate ----- Consider supporting us on our reasonably-priced patreon! https://www.patreon.com/killjamesbond ------ WEB DESIGN ALERT  Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/   Kill James Bond is hosted by November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com

You have to be the strangest poker player I ever met. Oh, you have no idea. Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of Coal James Bond. I'm November Kelly, I'm joined as always by my friends Abigail, Thorne, and Devon. DEVON Hey! How you doin'? NK And Devon and I are sort of like holding hands for this bonus pick, right? This is an indistinguishable- could be either of us. We watched The Card Counter.

DEVON Yeah, it was alright. NK That's right. NK Oh, I have some thoughts about this one. DEVON I've brought you a conundrum today, ladies. I've brought you a movie that I saw several years ago and remembered enjoying, and now, having watched it again last night, I now want to try to litigate, does this movie deserve to fucking exist? And I have some very strong opinions about it.

I really liked this movie. I remember liking it when I saw it for the first time, it's one of my favorite movies the last few years. And I relate to it in a few levels, and I do want to say ahead of time here, that much like To The Bone, right, this is one of the ones where like, some viewers may be affected, and I am some viewers. So I do want to overshare again, and you'll know when it happens. There's also a lot of content warnings to go along with this one.

Oh yes. That will be in the description, and they'll be apparent. Yeah. So this is a Paul Schrader movie, a long time collaborator of Martin Scorsese. And it's about two American compulsions, or at least it frames these things as being sort of like, in dialogue with each other. Gambling and torture. This is a movie that's setting its stall out very firmly in the this movie is about 9-11 side of the this movie is about being transgender or being about 9-11. Um. But it is incorrect.

I think it's... Because it is in fact about being transgender. I think it's both! I will just say this ahead of time, I think it's the first movie to be about being transgender and about 9-11. Um. Okay. And... My god. Yeah. It's an Oscar Isaac movie, and he's sort of carrying this movie.

Does a great job, by the way. I always love seeing Oscar Isaac, and he's very good. Incredible actor. With like, another actor, I don't know if this movie would have worked, right? I have a little, kind of... Yeah. Because it's one of these, it's another one of these movies that's like, very sparse, very like, close in, would work as a play again, I think. And a lot of like, sort of character driven, sort of character study stuff in it. But so, Oscar Isaac is, well he describes himself, who is like, someone who is suited to incarceration, right? Which, I was an American kid, I feared confinement of any kind. And then he goes to prison. This entirely grey prison. And I do want to talk about this movie's use of colour, because its use of greys and browns, mostly greys, is superlative. And yeah, he has gone to prison, military

prison. For ten years. Yes. For crimes that we don't yet know. He reads Marcus Aurelius while he's in military prison, Marcus Aurelius, stoic philosopher, if you know your stoicism it's all about coping with suffering, Marcus Aurelius' meditations were also written as his own private journal, which is the theme, because we see Oscar Isaac journaling a lot throughout this. ALICE I do like-

SONIA And also in prison he learns to count cards. ALICE Well, I do like that he notes that, as he's reading Marcus Aurelius, that he had never read a book before, like cover to cover, before going to prison. But yes, he learns to count cards in prison, and we see him free in casinos, like, counting cards at Blackjack. And there's a little thing here, by the way, because he explains how to count cards in Blackjack, which is keeping track of which cards are in play and which cards aren't, right?

So you can establish what the advantage to you is, as he says, "-What separates Blackjack from other games is that it's based on dependent events, meaning past affects the probability in the future." And that line, and the whole explanation of it, is almost verbatim from a Wired.com explainer video of like a former like card counter explains how to count cards in Blackjack, right? Really? Fully stolen, yeah. The thing is, right.

Oh, come on. That's so cheap. I think this is fine, right? I think one of the things that I really admire about Paul Schrader, right, is the sort of the art of the like good enough, right? It's good enough where it doesn't need to... that's not a criticism. Not really. No, no, 100% I'm with you. The sort of like, structural supports of the thing don't have to be that fancy, right? And so

to me this is like a great piece of sort of like, screenwriting advice if you like, because you take pretty cursory research, right, and you don't need to rewrite the whole thing, you can steal a bit, you can fudge a bit, you can just use the first thing, and it's how you think about using it and how you deploy it and the kind of intentionality there. I'm saying intentionality so much lately. RILEY It's because we're the fucking modern Siskel and Ebert, that's why. Well the thing is, the movie's called The Card Counter, but it's not really about card counting, like, that's just the way that we get into this thing. So him just using a cursory explanation of it is completely reasonable, to my mind.

Yeah, I actually know a guy who counts cards, in casinos like For a Living, and I don't think he does any of the stuff that happens in this movie. L. Yeah. S. Thankfully. L. Mmhm. Again, it's the art of the good enough, it's the art of like, getting things done and out, right, is that like, it drives the plot along, and that's all you need, right? It's not really the point of the thing.

One thing that we do see is that as he counts cards, he is very careful. There's a little interplay of looks between Oscar Isaac and this blackjack dealer, as he's playing in this casino. And they kind of, like, there's a look of mutual recognition, and we see over his shoulder the pit boss, the casino floor manager, just kind of like, hove into shot, and the second he sees him over his shoulder, Oscar Isaac is like, on the way out, he says hi to him on the way out. DUNCAN He wins $750, so like, not a massive amount of money, and as we'll see later on, this is deliberate, he says later he likes to fly

under the radar and win small amounts of money. I'd like to mention, like, the way he's styled at this point. So he wears a very neat pressed gray shirt, black tie and like a leather or pleather jacket, but like a very smart one, very slick. His hair is like very, very neat. He's almost got the kind of fashe haircut. He drives like a Ford. So he's well put together and he's slick, but he's very unassuming. He's got this like quite charming salt and pepper hair. Actually. Yeah.

I can say this less subtly. I want Oscar Isaac to fuck me in this movie. Um, I don't know about this Oscar Isaac. I've had other Oscar Isaacs that I prefer. No, this is, this is very, very clean. This is, this is my, this is my preferred Oscar Isaac, right? Because, and it's quite like spy-like, it's quite like grey man, if you like that term. Literally.

There's a lot of greys in this, and it's all very beautifully put together. Where, it's like, oh god. Oscar Isaac is a very handsome man, right? But there's something about this particular character and this particular portrayal, where he plays it very sparse, very cold, like some kind of remote marine animal or something, you know? Like a shark, or some kind of whale or something. S This would be a good audition tape for Bond. Like, doing Daniel Craig Bond shit.

But no, this- S Sitting in casinos being sinister. This compels. Also, I see he gets into, like, a motel room, he unplugs the phone and the alarm clock, and wraps all of the furniture in bedsheets? Couple of details here. First of all, when he gets the room, the room number is room 101. Subtlety, thy name is not Paul Schrader. Doesn't need to be.

Themes. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. If I like your work, I don't care if you're not subtle. Um, but also... This makes it what you like philosophy to do. Shut the fuck up. Know the work rules.

Hi, Abbie. A director I don't like being under subtle is just like, hello human resources? Take this man away, please? Yeah. No, it's didactic. Fine, whatever. One thing I do like as well is, as he's like, he gets in the room, he takes the paintings off the wall first, then the phone and the alarm clock, and as he does he walks out of

shot, the shot is kind of like, fixed, and it's quite a surveillance camera vibe. Which I like a lot. I like that, there's so many long shots in this that are held, and I was like, oh movies are back, baby! Like, you don't need to have like 500 cuts a minute and it looks like visual diarrhea, just set up a camera in the corner, fuck off to lunch, and let the actors do their job. That's right! You get a lot of acting, and a lot of sound design as well, this is the other thing, is

that like, there's this kind of omnipresent, quite husky, like, heavy breathing and like mechanical noise on the soundtrack, it's like, really, really good sound design. I interpret it that breathing noises is like, he's trying to do breathing exercises to keep calm. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. But yeah, we see him like drape white sheets that he has brought with him in his suitcase over all of the furniture and tie up all of the furniture with like twine. If you're wondering about the sort of like erotic in this movie, there is like it's, there's heavy breathing as he's tying up a

chair, like, it's gonna get less subtle from here, but there is some stuff. ALRIGHT, that's quite enough of that. If you want to hear us really get into talking about this movie, you are gonna have to give us some money, y'know? This is not a one-way street, we get real behind that paywall, alright? This is emotional labour that you're paying for right now. Not just the physical, back-breaking labour of making a podcast. If I haven't talked you out of it, patreon.com slash killjamesbond all one

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