The Cooler Review
by David N. Butterworth (dnb AT dca DOT net)December 19th, 2003
THE COOLER
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2003 David N. Butterworth
** (out of ****)
In the luckless Las Vegas love story "The Cooler," William H. Macy ("Seabiscuit")
plays a professional "cooler," a guy whose luck is so terminally lousy he's hired by the Golden Shangri-La Hotel and Casino simply to pass that bad karma onto its patrons. His mere presence at the gaming tables can cause a blackjack player to bust, a craps player to crap out.
Macy's Bernie glides through the Shangri-La's carpeted gambling parlors, stroking the side of a spinning roulette wheel as he passes, nestling up to whomever it is that needs cooling, his sad-sack visage slowly morphing into a self-congratulatory smile of satisfaction as the hot streak plummets 30 degrees.
Life is good, sort of, for Bernie until he meets his Lady Luck, an enticing
cocktail waitress named Natalie (Norristown's own Maria Bello) and the tables turn again.
If you're making a Las Vegas casino drama (and who the hell isn't these days?) you want to keep you camera flowing, your action strictly mobile, all your lights a flashing. You want to infuse it with a smoky score and cast Alec Baldwin not as the sensitive bar keep with a sympathetic ear but as the hard-hitting
casino manager who breaks legs as well as fortunes (don't anybody dare tell him that Shelly is a girl's name). You want to pair a couple of likable leads, show a bit of skin, give it a sappy, happy ending. Vegas is, after all, the place where dreams come true (but often don't).
Director and co-writer Wayne Kramer pulls this off... to a point. The bustling
casino scenes are noisy and eventful and he has Paul Sorvino effect a decent Wayne Newton impersonation as an old-school lounge singer. Likewise Mark Isham's
muted trumpets provide for a sultry soundtrack... but where the hell is John Barry? Kramer professes to be a huge fan of the veteran British composer who might have stunned us with another "Body Heat" (think sultry sax lines and long,
loving jazz riffs) given the chance.
But the humdrum subplots are distracting--yuppie co-owner Ron Livingston wants to revitalize the aging casino; Bernie's son and pregnant girlfriend (Shawn
Hatosy and Estella Warren) show up and discover why Dad walks with a limp, Sorvino's
Buddy Stafford is a worthless junkie--and Kramer fluffs the film's most interesting
aspect, the central relationship between Bernie and Natalie (I guess "The Fluffer"
was already taken?). Their love is written as genuine but it unfurls overnight,
and Bernie's very modus operandi should have prevented the two from hooking up in the first place.
Surprisingly the film was originally rated NC-17. Baldwin's Shelly isn't a firm believer in "please" and "thank you" of course but the film's explicit sex scenes needed to be toned down for this R-rated release (we see Bello's breasts and Macy's behind and if the latter isn't justification for an NC-17 rating then I don't know what is!). Sex and violence in "The Cooler" almost seem like afterthoughts for when the script (co-written by "gambling advisor" Frank Hannah) isn't working.
And when Bernie isn't working "The Cooler" isn't working. Despite fine contributions from Macy and his eager co-stars Baldwin and Bello, the film winds
up looking cool but feeling artificial, much like its Neon Oasis setting.
--
David N. Butterworth
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