Rent Croupier (1998)

Low budget film noir - Clive Owen's impassive face is perfect for the over-detached central role - Croupier review by RP

Mike Hodges directed the classic Brit gangster film 'Get Carter' - and here he is again, directing another low budget Brit (although, other than a few scene-setting location shots, filmed in Germany) classic film noir, this time starring Clive Owen.

I have always found Clive Owen to be a 'wooden' actor yet here his impassive face is perfect for his central role as a croupier in a casino, observing the punters as they inevitably lose their money.

Clive Owen plays aspiring author Jack Manfred, under pressure from his girlfriend who sees herself living with a successful author. Just for the money, he gets a job as a croupier at a London casino - he's had experience of the job while in S Africa - and uses his observations of the other staff as the basis for a novel. He is approached to be the 'inside man' for a bungled heist, his girlfriend is killed in a hit-and-run accident, and there is an ambiguous ending. But throughout it all, Jack / Jake (the protagonist in his novel) keeps a detached view on the gambling world and its losers...

It's not a thriller, it's quite slow moving, there's no crash-bang-wallop (there is a little bit of violence and mild sex scenes), and the attempted heist is a very minor part of the story. But the atmosphere and the cool, over-calculating presence of the perhaps unnaturally detached central character, Jack / Jake the croupier, is quite remarkable.

5/5 stars - excellent.

[Aside: Mike Hodges also directed Clive Owen in the slow-moving, atmospheric 2003 Brit gangster film 'I'll Sleep When I'm Dead' - that's another of those films you either love or hate. Me, I quite liked it...]

Impossible to Connect - Croupier review by griggs

I’ll admit I had high hopes for Croupier—a cool, smart British film set in the gritty London of my late teenage years, a city I loved, but that’s since vanished. And to be fair, the plot is clever and hooked me early on. There’s a slick, noir-ish vibe that’s easy to settle into, and Clive Owen absolutely looks the part. But while the script has its flaws, it’s the direction that really lets the film down. The pacing drags, and there’s a cold, clinical detachment to everything, making it almost impossible to connect with any character. You’re kept at arm’s length, which drains the film of tension and emotional weight.