It's a title that doesn't hit right, feels like there's
a word or two missing
dir: Edward Berger
2025
There are no small roles, just small players, and I don’t think Colin Farrell does “small”. Oh sure, he’s had some shitty roles, but they weren’t small. And, sure, when he started out he was often drunk on set, but, still, you’d never accuse him of doing anything less than giving the biggest brassiest performances you’ve ever seen.
Here, in this film, he plays a small time crim / fuck up who is down to his last roll of cash, living as he does very high up on the hog, in Macau.
Macau, like Hong Kong before it, was a Chinese town controlled by a European power, being Portugal, for a long time. That time is done, and now, other that the thousands of casinos, the influence remains in the colonial architecture (that the CCP hasn’t gotten around to getting rid of yet) and the cuisine.
So even today, as a setting, it has a kind of cosmopolitan air, or at least it gives the impression that a European scallywag pretending to be some kind of high roller or aristocrat would be cut some slack there, for whatever reason.
But really, when it’s mostly set in high-end casinos and hotel rooms, you realise this is all tourist bullshit. You could set this anywhere where there are casinos and hotels, but Vegas has been overdone, and if 'Lord Doyle' pulled this shit at the Crown casino here in Melbourne, he wouldn’t get months of leeway and third chances – the second they sniffed that he was out of cash he’d be out on his arse.
For some reason, though, they are letting him play out the last moments of his bender, but we are under no illusions that he’s not fucked.
It’s that desperate air about him, there’s a stink we can smell through the screen. We see him sweating through his suits, his strongly coloured suits, and it’s in how hollow his ingratiating patter sounds even at the start. Lots of people are chasing him, for moneys owed, for bridges burned, and he’s been given a selection of ultimatums that alternate between that he has to pay up or get the fuck out of town, or pay up AND get the fuck out of town.
I feel like the way he’s derisively referred to as a gweilo, and at one point refers to himself as such, seems like a dated, odd thing. It’s especially strange since Macau is a place that thrives on tourism, so fuck ups from all over the world would pass through Macau, so the presence of British conmen wouldn’t be that surprising. Also, it’s a Cantonese term from Hong Kong, so… Look it’s not like I’m arguing it’s reverse racism or anything, it’s just odd, and it makes it feel like it’s a story from decades ago updated to a more contemporary setting where some of its ideas and dialogue maybe doesn’t fit.
None of this detracts from Colin Farrell’s performance, I mean what really could. If you, like me, spent some part of this year marvelling at the work Farrell did playing the Penguin in the HBO series of the same name, you know he can basically do anything now. Nothing is too appalling, no horror is beyond him, no betrayal is a bridge too far, he can play it all. And here he’s playing a desperate fuck trying anything short of prayer and vitamins to make it all last a little bit longer.
It’s not just that he’s a monstrous drunk as well, but this high life he has become accustomed to and is loathe to leave means he’s also ravenous, insatiable, unable to be satisfied in any way. All the lobster, all the caviar and blinis, all the Cristal he insists on (and cannot, for most of the film, pay for anymore) won’t fill the gaping void inside.
He is pursued, not too fiercely, by a fellow Brit working on behalf of an insurance agency, trying to get him for some money he stole, which presumably has been funding his lavish lifestyle up till now. Tilda Swinton plays this detective, and while she plays it frowsy and brittle, she knows more about ‘Lord Doyle’ than Lord Doyle does, and knows even his accent is bullshit. She provokes his anger just to hear him Irish things up.
Very convincing Irish accent Colin, good work.
Of course he reverts back to type immediately after. This is how small time he is, as she points out, the fake surname he gives people isn’t even a posh surname. He’s not even pretending he’s an aristo; he’s just pretending his first name is Lord so people will call him that, even with a snarl or utter contempt in their “Lord Doyle, there is vomit on your unzipped pants, very good sir. Lord Doyle, you have til Tuesday to pay us what you owe or give up your kidneys” that kind of stuff.
Everyone looks down on him with almost pity, including Dao Ming (Fala Chen), who is a parasitical organism that would thrive in such a sub-culture that lives to drain losers of their money – she is a loan shark, though it’s not presented in those terms. She at first offers him the pitch that she would offer anyone who was running low on money, which is that she’s offering to provide him with a stake, and then they split the profits in delightful ways.
Of course they, being the prey, sometimes do unfortunate things like fling themselves off of the top of casinos, and then you’re left with nothing. They have less than nothing, but you’re still out of pocket. That has to hurt. Also, the knowledge that these people are speeding towards their own ruin, and you’re helping them go faster, that’s probably uncomfortable?
Why she goes further than just having pity for Doyle and then actually takes pity on him, we’ll never know for sure. I don’t think it was sexual attraction. Doyle as played here superficially sounds charming, but we’re meant to get that it no longer works on anyone, and there’s nothing sexual about it. I can only guess that it’s deep sadness on her part, and that she sees one loser, one day, so pathetic and so loserish that she just can’t do what she normally does, and does the opposite, trusting an absolute fuck up that she should not, must not trust.
If you’re in the lower depths of a downward spiral, if you’ve squandered hundreds of thousands of stolen pounds and have nothing to show for it, if it feels like you are weeks or days from death, for people that aren’t full time, whole life fuckups, you might think they might be keen to try something different. Beyond addicts or addiction, I am talking about truly cursed people; you’d think maybe I’ll just stop?
You think it’s going to go one way, and it goes completely the other. You think an absolute loser’s luck can’t change, won’t change, because it sends totally the wrong message (unless you’re secretly working for the gaming industry), because no-one who’s lost hundreds of thousands of pounds ever gets them back, unless they have millions of other pounds to keep playing with, and even then the house always wins. Statistically, logically, the house always wins. We all know it, it’s a truism, and yet people still play. These people still desperately need to lose everything, in the end, to really appreciate it.
For such a creature, for such a character, winning would be a new hell, don’t you think?
People’s mileage will vary so much with this flick, and I’ve seen plenty of reviews right it off completely, seeing this as a minor work about a Small Player, with an okay performance by Farrell but he’s surrounded by ciphers, and some reviewers even had the temerity to mock Tilda Swinton’s character’s hair. How dare they? How very dare they?
Swinton is fine, I would argue she’s even great, though there’s not enough of her. And I thoroughly enjoyed Fala Chen’s sad character. But this is a selfish showcase for Lord Doyle. It’s Lord Doyle’s show, all of the time. It’s his ballad. We might never know the reasons as to why he is such a monumental fuckup, unless we read the book this was based on, which I’m not inclined to do. Every sweaty desperate smile, every pathetic attempt to turn his luck around, every assertion of bullshit, I was there to marvel at it, at every turn. This flick may come across as false, as fake, as flimsy to other viewers, but to me is a perfect portrait of a pathetic character, one beyond redemption, beyond saving, who cannot be other than what he is. Some people can transcend their programming, some most absolutely cannot.
Some lament the way life turns out for them, others lament their bad luck. But few set fire to themselves so readily and wonder why it got so hot in the room all of a sudden whlle wearing a well tailored suit saturated with petrol.
I loved it, but my tastes are bizarre, sometimes. Despite four pages of writing I don’t think I really got close to explaining why I think the film works where others think it fails. I guess there are just some times when tales like this about characters like this deeply resonate with me. If it has a depressing ending, well, isn’t that the appropriate one?
7 times the game of baccarat seems quite dumb and not fun out of 10
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“I may be a gweilo but I still have a soul, and as far as I can tell mine is no more lost than yours.” – there aren’t an abundance of actors who could say a garbled line like that convincingly - Ballad of a Small Player
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