This Las Vegas tale is part bedtime story, part nightmare.
By STEVE PERSALL
Published January 15, 2004
[Photo: Lions Gate Films]
Performances by Alec Baldwin, left, and William H. Macy provide the highlights in The Cooler.
Las Vegas isn't the best place to go looking for fairy tales. First-time filmmaker Wayne Kramer works hard to manufacture one in The Cooler, but never quite decides whether he wants his movie to be Grimm or merely grim. Fanciful things happen then sadistic things follow. Who can live happily ever after when everyone's a frog?
The premise is pure luck. Bernie Lootz (a perfectly cast William H. Macy) doesn't have a lick of it. His occupation is as a "cooler" for a second-rate casino on the Fremont strip, apart from the glitzy resort moneyholes. A cooler is a guy with perpetually bad luck who can pass it along to slot machines, craps tables, wherever it's needed to keep the house in the black. Bernie is the best because he's the worst at winning.
That is, until he falls for a cocktail waitress, Natalie Belisario (Maria Bello). Love changes his luck and the Golden Shanga-La Casino manager, Shelley Kaplow (Alec Baldwin) doesn't like it a bit. He already has investors and a hotshot nouveau casino man (Ron Livingston) breathing down his beefy neck to make changes. Out with the old Vegas, including Shelley, and in with the new.
The Cooler works best when Bernie is icing the customers and his own life in a self-fulfilling prophecy. "Kryptonite on a stick," as Shelley calls him. Kramer uses the casino backdrop, the supernatural air of gambling and a few show-off camera tricks to create a sense of magical realism. However, he also creates a gritty motif blunting the rosy parts, even making them seem neglible in the long run. Scenes allowing Baldwin to deliver a ferocious performance are the highlights, while the romance between Bernie and Natalie seems too lightweight to be in the same building or movie with him.
Macy's hangdog countenance gives Bernie most of his personality and his halting line deliveries handle the rest, essaying a born loser who's sadly proud of it. The screenplay by Kramer and Frank Hannah piles on Bernie too many bad breaks for the comfort this film obviously wants to provide. A subplot concerning Bernie's estranged son (Shawn Hatosy) and Natalie's budding affection each occupy at least one scene too many. The shifts to madcap humor - especially the soured finale - are too abrupt to register.
Better that Kramer had concentrated on the relationship between Bernie and Shelley. The movie gets better in the second half when their contradictory relationship comes into focus, when Baldwin becomes one of the nastiest villains in recent memory. This is like watching his brief but scorching turn in Glengarry Glen Ross expanded to feature length with some sadism added for good measure. The real love story in The Cooler isn't between Bernie and Natalie but Bernie and Shelley, the mouse and the rat.
The Cooler
Grade: B
Director: Wayne Kramer
Cast: William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin, Maria Bello, Shawn Hatosy, Estella Warren, Ron Livingston, Paul Sorvino
Screenplay: Wayne Kramer, Frank Hannah
Rating: R; harsh profanity, violence, sexual situations, nudity
