Review of The Cooler (2003) by Myron K — 02 Jul 2011

The Cooler is a spectacular movie about trust, loyalty, luck, desperation, and fighting for the things you want in life. The characters are quite gloomy but that is only because of the circumstances that life has put them in, get to know them a little, and you'll find out that most of them are just as desperate to find love and happiness as anyone else. The Cooler is a relatively small movie that is elevated by the magnificent performances by William Macey (forever playing the desperate lovable loser), Maria Bello, and Alec Baldwin (whose very good at playing seemingly suave, calm and collected guys with alterior motives and intentions).

Directed and written by Wayne Kramer, The Cooler is a frank, original, and quite brutal exploration into the business of gambling in casinos and gambling in general. To many, gambling is just a way of possibly making a quick buck but to Bernie Lootz (Macy) and Shelly Kaplow (Baldwin) its a way of life, literally. Bernie Lootz is a "Cooler", who is an unlucky individual whose presence at the tables results in a streak of bad luck for the other players. His luck is so bad that he has actually made a career out of it. When a table is "hot" or someone is "on fire" all Bernie has to do is go over to that table, touch something or someone or make a bet, and the luck of that individual instantly turns bad.

Bernie does't have much going for him he lives in a studio apartment in a shabby motel on the Las Vegas strip, he is indebted to the Shangri-La casino boss Shelly Kaplow (who also "cured" him of his gambling habit by breaking one of his knee caps), and he cant even recall the last time he has had physical and emotional contact with a woman.

Bernie's boss, Shelly, is just as desperate as Bernie is because he is under constant pressure by his ad visors and shady superiors to bring about change to his casino for the 21st century. Shelly is a old timer, he is completely old fashioned when it comes to casinos and how he runs his business and doesn't consider Vegas or casinos to be a family oriented place. He is disgusted when a snobbish ivy league graduate named Larry Sokolov comes in to his business and tries to change things up. To Bernie, all of this is an insult, an insult, to him, his business, his ideology, and most importantly, his pride and to add insult to injury his best employee Bernie is giving him his one week notice.

Matters get worse when Shelly brings in Natalie Belisario (Bello), a cocktail waitress, into Bernie's life in a attempt to keep Bernie from resigning, however she begins to fall for him and then Bernie's luck begins to change for the better. Bernie inadvertently runs into his son with his pregnant girlfriend and then things get even more complicated as these characters lives intertwine with one another sometimes with disastrous consequences (such is the nature of gambling).

As I mentioned early in this review The Cooler is about desperate characters doing desperate things in desperate situations. Some people go to Las Vegas just to have fun however those who live there are usually shown to be miserable and desiring a change in life. The characters in this film are very three dimensional which makes for very uneasy when they get punished with scenes such as when Bernie's son is taught a lesson by Shelly "the old school way". When you gamble you take a chance, win or lose it doesn't matter if the odds are against you one can still come out a victor. Bernie decides to take those chances, he takes a chance standing up to his boss, helping out his son, and finding love in a woman who is just as desperate for love as he his.