Ballad of a Small Player review – Colin Farrell wins us over in flashy, slight gambler tale | Toronto film festival 2025

It was straightforward to grasp why Edward Berger’s identify was being bandied round in relation to the reinvention of 007, the director having proven himself to be greater than able to each extravagantly staged motion (his Oscar-winning breakout All Quiet on the Western Entrance) and knife-edge intrigue (his Oscar-winning follow-up Conclave). He dismissed hypothesis on the time (with some delicate annoyance) and the job has since landed on the ft of Denis Villeneuve – however his newest, China-set playing drama Ballad of a Small Participant, provides flashy bombast to his résumé and helps to clarify why despite the fact that he might need handed on Bond (and lately Ocean’s too), he’s in improvement on a Bourne.Berger is a canny industrial director, confidently switching between style, language and placement, the sort of in a position film-maker studios are determined to entrust a franchise with, however I hope he’s sparing with the time he chooses to spend beneath the studio thumb. Ballad of a Small Participant, an operatic adaptation of the Lawrence Osborne novel, will not be fairly him at his greatest – it’s way more bark than chew – nevertheless it’s made with such power and finesse and is so distinctively separate from his different movies that I sit up for seeing what different non-sequel journeys he chooses to take us on sooner or later.He’s headed straight from Rome to Macau, the Vegas of China, full with pretend skies, shoddier variations of world landmarks and a deck of gamblers whose shamelessly indulgent nights flip into existentially regretful days. One in every of them is Lord Doyle (Colin Farrell), a pretentious longtime visitor of a lodge he’s struggling to afford. His carried out posh accent and pretend Savile Row gloves masks a working-class Irish pretender, whose luck on the Baccarat desk has began to fade. His unpaid payments are mounting up after which there’s the small drawback of a brand new lodge visitor who may simply know who he actually is.That visitor is performed by Tilda Swinton, who had one other small function in a trendy Netflix character research a couple of man with a selected skillset, David Fincher’s The Killer. In that movie she was such a knockout that in a single wonderful prolonged scene, she managed to steal the whole film, however right here she’s a wierd distraction, trying extra like a personality from a Roald Dahl novel (and in her closing scene, like somebody from The Starvation Video games universe). It’s an excessive amount of of a dress-up bit and her efficiency, and absurd styling, is a mirrored image of Berger’s tendency to crank an excessive amount of of his movie as much as an 11 with a thumpingly dramatic rating from Volker Bertelmann and an uncomfortably dialled-up sound design. At instances the latter is horribly essential, throughout some notably disagreeable meals binges, however too usually, it renders us numb.It’s to Farrell’s nice credit score that he avoids following Berger all the way in which to the highest and over, a job that might have pressured a lesser actor into deafening histrionics (one can solely wince on the considered Nicolas Cage right here) however one which he embodies with extra thought and cautious modulation. His character is an addict who can’t cease consuming, terrified by the worry that he may by no means be full. Farrell’s jittery unease – as he goes for yet another sport, has yet another drink, eats yet another slice – is made troublesome to observe, nevertheless it sears much less due to the cranked-up nature of Berger’s path and extra due to the actor’s haunted drive. What if there’s nothing on the market to fill me up? Exterior of his vices, he additionally hopes {that a} on line casino hostess, performed with empathy by Fala Chen, may assist.The place the movie takes that individual, moderately cliched dynamic is tough to grasp earlier than it turns into exhausting to abdomen, a last-act reveal that we’ve seen too many instances earlier than. We’ve seen much less of Macau although, not less than in western cinema (Bond made a quick cease in Skyfall), and Berger exhibits its neon-drowned extra as efficiently seductive earlier than it turns into repellent, like a lot of the movie. The grim spectre of suicide brings a big shadow over the movie, spoken about frankly by those that have discovered themselves in locations with out many choices, and within the movie’s hardest moments, Berger is ready to seize simply how awfully the overwhelm of habit could make all of it appear totally hopeless. He’s too usually distracted although by the overwhelm of approach, and Ballad of a Small Participant finally ends up somewhat too slight, a sketchy have a look at a familiarly doomed character (a 3rd Oscar movie in a row appears unlikely). Farrell is the actual winner right here.