The Cooler

Apologies to everyone here for calling Sideways a terrible movie. Sometimes, a young, opinionated sportswriter like me needs a taste of rotten rat meat to make him appreciate a good cut of chicken.
“The Cooler” was truly a waste of my time, and the writing was on the wall as soon as Alec Baldwin showed up. It should be industry standard to put him on the cover of the movie – a warning label of sorts.
The Cooler is the story of William H. Macy as ‘Bernie’ who’s seemingly terminal bad luck has landed him a job as a casino ‘cooler’ who is paid to spread his curse around and keep punters from wining money. The dialogue plays like a plastic marimba: hollow and artificial. The plot come around eventually, but an hour and a half of Alec Baldwin’s raspy voiced 2dimentional old school casino boss was just too much. Ace from Casino wouldn’t wipe his ass with this guy’s suit.
The movie played more like a daytime soap opera than a feature film, complete with unintentionally comical highs and lows and one auspicious coincidence after another. I could have been spared the William H. Macy sex scene.

“No, honey, I don’t want to watch the special features.” Of course, she puts them on anyhow and I could have ‘technically’ got up and left the same way that she could ‘technically’ have laid some kind of cold shouldered silent guilt trip on me for as long as it takes for her to forget what it was about in the first place.

The cute little TV doc that they throw in with the deal got the biggest laugh of the night from yours truly when director Wayne Kramer explained that the film was shot in only 21 days and: “… as a director, you wonder if you’re going to be able to pull it off.”
HA! I think we’ve found the answer, Wayne old buddy: just do a half assed job!

Raoul
Live from The Sportsdesk

From the very jazzy beginning notes of Mark Isham's score and the dazzling overhead helicopter flight of the breezy lights of Las Vegas to the every end of a breathtaking ride through the raw hard core underbelly of old Las Vegas, The Cooler was an amazing piece of acting, directing, and script-writing. Listening to the director's commentary along with the whole amazing stream of experience, The Cooler is among the top movies of 2003. Even Alec Baldwin showed more depth in his usual sinister character - it wasn't some two-dimensional cut out figure. Maria Bello, nominated for a best supporting actress Golden Globe award signifies the off-beat, and independent nature of this film. The sex scenes are some of the most natural and some of the best work of nudity on film.

Unfortunately, the subtle cinematography is lost of some people. The whole gambling environment, the ambience and layered texture of the entire surrounding milieu that William H. Macy finds himself in a fantastic. His relationship with his son and new found girlfriend are an added subplot and connects well with the rest of the movie. I find that there is very little to find in this movie to complain about. I loved this movie and have watched it number of times.

A surprisingly insignificant Vegas noir drama starring some of Hollywood's best character actors (William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin, Paul Sorvino) and some up-and-comers (Maria Bello, Shawn Hatosy). The reason is primarily in the college-level script by Frank Hannah and director Wayne Kramer, which clumsily manages to leave no obvious symbol unexploited and forces the actors into belittled caricatures; and Kramer's penchant for over-directing, which, with his zealous camera tricks, is far more concerned with calling attention to himself than coherence and credibility. (The ending is simply lazy, though Kramer is apparently trying to invoke the deux et machina amendment.) Kramer is making his play to be the next Tarentino, but his real reference, in both neon color scheme and seedy set design, is Francis Coppola's ambitious failure "One From The Heart" (the closing credits are an insultingly backhanded hommage to that film's stunning opening credits) but he shows none of Coppola's flair for sophisticated showmanship.

Personally, I found The Cooler , a refreshing and vibrant movie that strike the perfect cord of lyrical color and dialogue of a changing Las Vegas. This subtle love story with Macy's and Bello's amazing chemistry and of course Baldwin's wicked, brutal persona were supported by a sound track second to none. The color schema, the amazing extras' performances, the the little touches such as Bello's slippers coming off at the swimming pool scene all captured the essence of a mysterious, perhaps, fantastical image of Las Vegas. For me, this is what film drama is all about. One of the best 2003 movies.