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A deep-pocketed neon-noir starring Colin Farrell as an inveterate playing addict and see-thru fraud who has three days to fork up the $45,000 USD he owes to his Macau resort and on line casino (lest he be deported again to England, or worse), Edward Berger’s “Ballad of a Small Participant” appears like a mighty first rate guess on paper. And but one thing is off from the second it begins with Farrell’s Lord Doyle groaning “fuck” into the toilet mirror, as if he’s simply observed it too.
The scenario doesn’t want lengthy to develop extra ominous from there, as Volker Bertelmann’s thunderous string and horn rating — squelching in your face like a moist fart all through the course of a film that’s meant to really feel like a fever dream — accompanies the arch comedy of watching our protagonist attempt to slip out of his penthouse suite with out getting caught. There’s a Coen brothers’-like smirk to Lord Doyle’s cartoon obviousness, however that doesn’t cease Berger from capturing the sequence prefer it’s straight out of “Conclave,” all straight strains and holy objective.
Anybody with eyes can see that Lord Doyle is an impostor (his inexperienced velvet go well with screams “I’m bluffing!” loud sufficient for folks to grasp it in each language, which is further foolish for somebody who completely performs a pure luck recreation like baccarat), however that isn’t sufficient for locals to note a gweilo like him. In a spot constructed on empty guarantees, a peninsula whose Eiffel Tower is a replica of a replica of the actual one in Paris, he’s simply one other lie that doesn’t even have the guts to imagine in itself.
The one drawback there’s that “Ballad of a Small Participant” suffers from the identical half-defeated id disaster; very similar to our expensive Doyle (or no matter his actual identify is), Berger’s movie is so determined for a win that it loses any actual sense of what the stakes are. Regardless of promising a welcome throwback to the type of down-and-out milieu that authors like Graham Greene as soon as placed on the map, this Lawrence Osborne adaptation winds up feeling like nothing a lot as a quintessential Netflix film: Straightforward to look at and unimaginable to care about.
I’ll say this in its favor: Watching Doyle eat a meal is probably some of the uncomfortable issues I’ve ever seen on the massive display, and I must think about that its horror will translate to small ones as nicely. The person is rapacious — a hungry ghost with an enormous mouth and an empty abdomen. He shoves meals into his maw like a human No-Face, and his complete physique trembles whereas he does it, as if Doyle is attempting to outlive his acute playing withdrawal by distracting his different senses. Each chunk looks like his final, and but he’s additionally satisfied {that a} single fortunate streak is all he must clear his money owed. Alas, there are some money owed that may’t be repaid. There are some stains that don’t wash out. There are some issues that cash can’t resolve.
Considered one of them appears to be personal investigator Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton, splitting the distinction between “Michael Clayton” and “Snowpiercer” with a professional forma efficiency memorable just for the glasses she will get to put on), who’s been employed to safe photographic proof that Doyle is hiding out in Macau. Extra inclined to cash — or not less than extra understanding of why Doyle tries to purchase his manner out of every little thing — is an enigmatic Rainbow On line casino worker named Dao Ming (Fala Chen), who watches the Englishman blow a fortune at her baccarat desk solely to be endeared by his misplaced soul sloppiness. Chen is the wraith-like coronary heart of this story, however her character strains perception even in a shaky hand of a film that operates with all the inner logic of a playing habit.
Then once more, so does every little thing else in “Ballad of a Small Participant,” which reshuffles its playing cards so typically that you just begin to surprise if it’s enjoying with a full deck. Switching gears between heightened comedy, self-destructive bender, ex-pat farce, and an empty meditation on the connection between capitalism and disgrace, Berger’s movie doesn’t juggle genres a lot because it careens uncontrolled between them, its crumbling hero too narcissistic for something to matter past the tunnel imaginative and prescient of his subsequent line of credit score.
In fact, Doyle is simply searching for loans whereas he bides his time for a miracle, nevertheless it’s going to take one thing a bit extra proactive than that in an effort to cleanse him of the sins that he’s been attempting so exhausting to outrun, or not less than out guess. “You may be anybody in Macau,” Doyle tells Cynthia as a part of a gross sales pitch to go away him alone and “reside somewhat,” however Doyle — who’s already faked his personal demise as soon as — must develop into somebody if he hopes to outlive.
This film tries its greatest to nudge him in the suitable route, however the path it provides him to all-time low — and to the redemption that lies past it — proves exasperating. It’s some comfort that Doyle travels alongside the scenic route, as James Good friend’s ultra-wide cinematography permits the purgatorial casinos of Macau to look as sterile because the fluorescent streets exterior are aglow with sizzle and seduction. Nonetheless, the movie’s wealthy sense of place by no means catalyzes right into a official ambiance, which makes it that a lot more durable to reconcile the “enjoyable” of Berger’s tone and the flustered charisma of Farrell’s efficiency with the soul rot on show.
“Ballad of a Small Participant” mines a lot of its queasy momentum from Lord Doyle’s relentless desperation and refusal to surrender, however the film doesn’t give us a lot of a cause to not throw within the towel. Doyle’s luck may flip earlier than the tip of this story — ours won’t.
Grade: C
“Ballad of a Small Participant” premiered on the 2025 Telluride Movie Pageant. Netflix will launch it in choose theaters on Friday, October 17, and on Netflix on Wednesday, October 29.
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