“There is a weight a man can accrue.†Oscar Isaac says this in voice-over at the top of The Card Counter trailer, before we see that he has covered every surface of his hotel room in white sheets, and he has sat down to do some moody journaling à la Reverend Toller. Isaac’s talking about his character’s past sins, but he could easily be talking about writer-director Paul Schrader’s accrued Facebook posts, the weight of which hangs over every non-status-update project he takes on. The latest of these is a thriller about an ex–military interrogator turned gambler (Isaac) who teams up with Tiffany Haddish and appears to confide in Tye Sheridan as he pursues some sort of revenge plot. Willem Dafoe appears to be his target, shown in disturbing blown-out black and white flashback at his most wild-eyed and sweaty. The movie hits theaters on September 10, giving Schrader’s PR team plenty of time to change his log-in info so we can just enjoy another one of his dark meditations on institutional evil as told through a tortured man.
Paul Schrader Takes Break From Facebook to Write and Direct The Card Counter
