Review of The Cooler (2003) by Mike C — 24 May 2012

I've known about this movie for some time. Only after watching the newer, Spanish Intacto did I become interested. Intacto is a borderline brilliant movie about luck. The Cooler is, eh, a not so brilliant movie about luck. Not a total loss, but I think the writers had to projects in mind when writing this and never fully decided what they were going to do: the gangster movie, or something of a lighter, romantic variety.

Macy plays The Cooler at The Shangri-La Casino in Vegas. What is a cooler? Someone who can steal your luck with his mere presence and/or touch. That's not so much the point of the movie, and that idea plays a far larger role in Intacto. In this, the bigger story is the conflict as Macy falls in love with Bello's character, and they have to find away to basically use luck to escape the owner of the casino.

Seems like a cute enough, original enough story. But there was too much gangster stuff to be taken lightly. For crying out loud, watch the kick in the belly scene and tell me that's light. Second, the romance is not overly compelling. Finally, it's as if maybe they're getting long on time so just decide to throw in a screwy ending. Yeah, yeah, the ending had every thing to do with luck and is therefore a perfect ending to a movie about luck. You still can't make it completely unbelievable.