Synopsis
The Card Counter (2021) is Paul Schrader's crime drama, streaming online on iFILM, with Oscar Isaac in the lead. William Tell works the low-stakes casino circuit, counting cards and betting just enough to stay invisible. He sleeps in cheap motels he strips bare and wraps in white sheets, a ritual that hints at the prison years behind his calm. Discipline is how he keeps the past boxed up.
That order collapses when a furious, drifting kid named Cirk turns up with a plan: revenge on the officer who wrecked both their lives. Tell sees a shot at redemption in steering the boy away from it, and lets backer La Linda, played by Tiffany Haddish, stake him for a real run at the tournament tables. Keeping Cirk on the rails turns out harder than winning any hand.
Schrader, the man who wrote Taxi Driver, returns to his favorite figure — a lonely man with a journal and a debt he can't repay — and walks him toward a reckoning. Willem Dafoe appears only briefly, yet his character is the hinge the whole story swings on. Watch The Card Counter (2021) online on iFILM.
Starring
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