The Cooler Review
by Ryan Ellis (flickershows AT hotmail DOT com)February 4th, 2004
The Cooler
by Ryan Ellis
January 31, 2004
You feel as if you're late for a great party when you see movies more than a month after the awards buzz begins. The raves for Alec Baldwin in 'The Cooler' were strongest in December, yet I have just now had the opportunity to see for myself what the fuss is about with this flick. Is Baldwin worthy of his first Oscar invitation? Are William H. Macy and Maria Bello good enough as romantic leads to carry an entire picture? And, most importantly, is this actually a good movie? Yup, yeah and yes. Ironically, the strengths of this film are in descending order there. Baldwin is the best thing in it, Macy and Bello are second-best, and the story itself takes a back seat to the fine work of those 3 actors. Call this a true-blue character study where what happens isn't as interesting as why it does.
So what gives with the title of the movie? A cooler is someone who literally cools down a gambler on a winning streak. Shelley Kaplow (Baldwin) runs the Shangri-La casino in Las Vegas, employing his old friend Bernie Lootz (Macy) to walk the floor and just be near anyone with a hot hand...if you believe in that sort of thing. Bernie's luck has always been so bad that he just needs to stand there to ruin things for someone else. The two men go back a long way and once ran all sorts of scams until they "lucked" into this partnership, which appears to be perfect for both of them. Shelley is violent when he has to be, even going so far as to knee-cap Bernie years earlier when a debt got to be too big. Despite a permanent limp, Bernie doesn't hold a grudge. He says that he needed the wake-up call, although the subtext of that assault fuels much of the story. Still, these two aren't exactly chums anymore. Bernie is fond of telling anyone who cares that he's counting down the days until his debt has been repaid and he can leave town. When we first meet these guys, he's got seven days left---lucky 7. Into his life walks Natalie Belisario (Bello), a waitress at the Shangri-La who doesn't seem to notice Bernie at first, then appears to notice him when he so obviously shows that he's been noticing her. It isn't long until they're romantically involved (giving Bernie something to smile about for the first time in ages) while Shelley is being overrun by corporate types who want to "Disney up" his casino.
Bernie and Natalie start falling deeply in love, always talking and behaving as real people do. And what happens now that he has love in his life? Well, his bad luck is about to change (which is a tagline they should have used for the movie, by the way). Macy---a fine actor who's spent his career playing supporting characters---is often heard rat-a-tatting the dialogue authored by David Mamet or P.T. Anderson. As excellent as both of those men are at writing screenplays, they don't always give actors a chance to play it real. [If anyone on this planet talks in the Mamet-like staccato rhythm with as much humour & smarts, they've yet to enter my life.] Having said that, Macy plays a sad-sack loser once again, but gets to work with less rigid material this time. Plus, he gets to perform in his first sex scene after 23 years of movie acting. Sharing that scene is Bello, who's not a young sex symbol either. Their time in bed (not always in the middle of coitus, mind you) is frank and honest. Reportedly, some footage was cut to get an "R" rating. Even so, there's some raw stuff to be seen here. I liked that the filmmakers weren't afraid to show a cottage-cheese ass and a woman who doesn't look like she just peeled herself off the pages of Cosmo. They have a bonafide relationship, and I liked them together. These two have scads more chemistry together than the dreadful Stiller/Aniston combo in the putrid 'Along Came Polly'.
I can report that Alec Baldwin has indeed received his first Academy Award nomination, 15 years after his break-out year of 1988. That's fitting because while he IS a supporting character, Baldwin's Shelley presses up against all the major players in this film. In fact, he's really the lynchpin of the whole show. He's got the power over our romantic leads, he's fighting off the corporate "visionaries" at every turn, and even showcases his ruthless aggression in a scene with Bernie's manipulative son and the kid's pregnant wife (played by Shawn Hatosy and Estella Warren, who thankfully don't take up too much of the running time). What so impressed me with Baldwin in this performance is how much he does with his face, particularly the eyes. They say that film acting is done with body language, gestures, and especially the face. Not that he's as strong as Pacino in 'The Godfather', but that landmark movie is the first one that comes to mind when I think of an actor who is doing more with his face than with his words. I mentioned Baldwin's Oscar nomination earlier. Will he win? Tim Robbins is the front-runner for his odd work in 'Mystic River', but my imaginary vote would be for Alec Baldwin. [Well, I'd go with Sean Astin in 'LOTR' actually, but they didn't find room for our fave pudgy hobbit.]
Have I described a painful drama here? Nah. There are plenty of laughs, which is critical. A film with such heavy material is wise to counter-balance the oft-brutal violence with humour. Fortunately, writer/director Wayne Kramer (who's new to me, but we'll see more of him in the future) doesn't go down the path of the dreary. This film could have been as dark and unrelenting as 'Leaving Las Vegas', but that would have been too exhausting in this case. After all, it might have been insulting if Nicolas Cage had played Ben Sanderson in the weirdo-comic ways he plays other characters. 'The Cooler', on the other hand, would have been too bleak and self-important if Kramer didn't have an occasional light touch. After all, a guy with unending bad luck is a funny story (well, not in the Short/Glover comic dud 'Pure Luck'). It's tragic, but tragedy is comedy...according to Mel Brooks. However, as solid as this script is and as much life as the actors bring to the proceedings, it's not perfect. A deus ex machina doesn't even make logical sense---how DID that car do what it did? But in a movie about luck, I suppose the climactic plot turn is not as big a cheat as it would appear to be. If you care about Bernie and Natalie as much as I did, you won't mind anyway.
So we've got a late-2003 winner here. This is a movie made for grown-ups, a theme you'll also find within the story itself. You won't find much better acting in the theatres right now and all 3 of the top-billed stars are fantastic. One final note, though. As much as I enjoyed the film, I'd enjoy seeing the last 20 minutes approached a little differently. The ending would have to be much more bleak, but I'd be intrigued to see where the story would go if Bernie would just accept his fate as a cooler. His chance for happiness with Natalie would be over, but he'd be accepting his responsibilities to Shelley. On the other hand, you could argue that all debts are paid at the end of the film. Some characters have to face the old Vegas adage...you can't beat the house. And luck has nothing to do with it.
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