‘Ballad of a Small Player’ lacks emotional stakes

Colin Farrell in Ballad of a Small Competitor Photo provided by Netflix Ballad of a Small Contestant is a heavily stylized film From the jump we re hit with the burning neon of Macao as a sweaty hungover Lord Doyle Colin Farrell wakes up in a hotel suite that looks like it s been hit by a tornado Pounding orchestral music underscores the scenes as he gets ready for the evening filmmaker Edward Berger giving us just a smidge of the lightly fantastical feel that will characterize the rest of the film Berger is no stranger to this type of drama His many-times-over Oscar-nominated film Conclave is as theatrical as they come with cardinals who feel more like gossipy teenage girls than men of the cloth But despite its operatic sense of style Ballad of a Small Player is missing the buoyancy of Berger s previous film The stakes feel nonexistent the characters disconnected and the whole thing oddly lifeless Lord Doyle if in fact that is his real name is in trouble He owes a hell of a lot of money to a hell of a lot of people as he puts it in his opening voiceover he s a high roller on a slippery slope He might call himself a lord but for the the bulk part he telegraphs everything you need to know about him through his dress his rumpled flair and his half-hearted attempt at a posh English accent he s an addict and a liar He s on the run from something and is almost at the end of his rope Doyle has much in common with previous characters of Farrell s career but he s missing a central characteristic Farrell is so adept at playing petulant man children disreputable but with a spark of sadness that evokes a sense of pity from the audience But any inner sadness that Doyle might have rings hollow The script written by Rowan Joff overshadows any exploration of the trials of addiction or of the inner life of this man with half-hearted mysteries that feel unanchored in character or feeling The biggest of these mysteries is Dao Ming Fala Chen a casino employee who has debts of her own She meets Doyle at the baccarat table one evening and then their paths cross again when a man she gave credit to jumps off of a building because he can t pay her back The other characters in Ballad of a Small Participant are minimal but at least feel grounded in their own reality The direction the script takes with Dao Ming however robs her of all semblance of character The romance between her and Doyle will no doubt end tragically there are no surprises in Ballad of a Small Member but their relationship already felt empty So the tragedy falls flat That s the biggest trouble with Ballad of a Small Performer there are no emotional stakes and therefore no tension Throughout the film Berger plays with the idea of the unreliable narrator Doyle often wakes up in his hotel room or other less savory places with no memory of how he got there He has so countless dreams of throwing himself off of buildings that you start to wonder if he already has But Doyle is so reliable in his unreliability that the mystery loses steam fairly expeditiously After a while the audience begins to spend more time trying to figure out what s real or not instead of connecting to the character at the center story At the end of the day Doyle is a given he might not have truly thrown himself off a building but he is in hell and he will dependably do just what you expect Berger s visuals almost draw the eye away from the lackluster script but bright colors and dreamy shots can only distract an audience from a lack of narrative for so long The post Ballad of a Small Competitor lacks emotional stakes appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta