Review: ‘Ballad of a Small Player’ is a bombastic yet predictable gambling thriller
2025 / Dir. Edward Berger
☆ 3/5
Watch if you like: that scene in The Substance where Dennis Quaid eats the shrimp, but it’s co-directed by Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson.
“Fuck,” Lord Doyle (Colin Farrell) says as he wakes up bloodied in a luxury Macau hotel room surrounded by the remnants of days of decadence, nursing a hangover. That’s how Ballad of a Small Player opens before immediately barreling through gorgeous shots of “China’s Las Vegas” set to a bombastic symphonic score from Volker Bertelmann. This wild energy rarely lets up, and director Edward Berger’s excessive style, coupled with another brilliant performance from Farrell, elevates what would otherwise be a mediocre algorithm movie into a mostly fun ride.
Plot-wise, there’s nothing remarkable to unravel here, with a hodgepodge of moments you would recognize if you’ve ever seen any movie about gambling, addiction, or morally dubious expatriates living abroad. Lord Doyle is circling the drain as he owes a small fortune to his hotel whilst a law firm investigator (Tilda Swinton) is attempting to reclaim nearly a million pounds that he swindled back in the U.K. Can Dao Ming (Fala Chen), the also unsuccessful casino hostess and wannabe loan shark, help Lord Doyle back to the top?
Farrell plays Lord Doyle (if that really is his name) like a mix of Errol Flynn and a Wes Anderson character wearing ridiculous suits, a pencil-thin mustache, gloves while he plays baccarat, and all manner of affectations pretending to be a human being. All he can seem to do is follow his desire to consume as much as possible, even if it kills him. Whether he has money or not, he finds his way into buffets and exorbitant room service bills by repeatedly gorging himself on champagne, lobster, or caviar.
It’s a performance well suited to the unreality of Macau and the eye-catching direction that takes viewers into a place that feels more surreal than Las Vegas. In Berger’s last film, Conclave, he led audiences into the secret world of the Vatican, and it’s a similar approach here albeit with a rampant, Scorsese-gangster-like energy where the camera is always propelling us forward or straight up ominously towards the roof—the last destination for gamblers at the end of the line.
For how immaculately crafted this film looks and how dedicated Farrell is to his character’s decadent spiral, it does feel strange the amount of effort that’s gone into making this stereotypical story full of cliches, a silly and predictable twist, and some unfortunate orientalist tropes. So while Ballad of a Small Player makes for a very watchable and often fun movie, it’s the equivalent of a sugar rush that’s great at the time but quickly fades away.