Ballad of a Small Player

Edward Berger’s film sags under its own ambition. That’s not to discredit Colin Farrell as said gambler, who does everything in his power to make you care about his Doyle, particularly in a deeply uncomfortable yet utterly arresting binge-eating scene. But Rowan Joffé’s screenplay, adapting the unwieldy novel of the same name by Lawrence Osborne, brings diminishing results, crafting a world so convoluted — complete with a twist you can see a mile off — that it never gives you a moment to understand Doyle. There’s not enough to him. Everyone else fares even worse. Giving Tilda Swinton such a paper-thin character is unforgivable. Ballad tries to balance a thoughtful ghost story with a crime caper and a high-stakes gambling narrative, which never converge in effective fashion. For a film with this much talent in front of and behind the camera, you’d expect it to be a lot more interesting, but Berger’s film sags under its own ambition.