Low Stakes

Las Vegas is a city built on the backs of losers. Everyone knows this: the retirees with nothing better to do, the would-be swingers hoping to find a Rat-Pack moment, the high-rollers who get those comped suites. They will all be losers when they head back home. And yet, they will all eventually return thinking this time they might beat the odds–but they won’t. Las Vegas feeds on perpetual self-delusion, promising glamour and only delivering bad buffets.

But even losers are romanticized in our Hollywood version of Las Vegas–they are noble lowlifes who yearn to lift themselves out of the gutter with a roll of the dice. Although today’s losers are most likely insurance salesmen from Kalamazoo who lodge their families at the Star Trek Hilton, we seem to identify more readily with the unshaven, unemployed loners who live in run-down motels and who fall in love with beautiful hookers. At least, that’s the impression you might get from artistically inclined Vegas movies like Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight, Mike Figgis’ Leaving Las Vegas, and now Wayne Kramer’s The Cooler. Like the tourism commercials that portray Las Vegas as a place where playful sins will be committed and left behind, movies about Vegas’ lovable losers are more wishful fantasy than hard reality.

The Cooler is certainly no exception to this rule, but it at least broaches the fact that the real Las Vegas has become more of a cheesy theme park than a glittering cesspool of sex and hi-balls. In fact, it’s that precise sub-plot that threatens to upend the movie since it’s quite a bit more interesting than the main storyline.

William H. Macy owns possibly the saddest face since the Hushpuppy Shoes dog, and in The Cooler he wields his folds and creases without mercy. As he hunches over the bar at the third-rate Shangri-La Casino, you can practically see waves of lifelong regret radiate from the bags under the eyes of his character, Bernie Lootz. With but a glance, you know: This guy is a loser. In Bernie’s case, though, he is a professional loser–a "cooler," someone who’s luck is so horribly bad that it infects anybody who might be winning at the tables or on the slots, turning hot streaks into icy cold pits. Bernie’s employer, Shangri-La manager Shelly Kaplow (Alec Baldwin), is also a longtime pal who once cured Bernie of his gambling addiction by shattering his kneecap with a sledgehammer. (He’s just that kind of guy.) But when Bernie finds romance with Natalie the cocktail waitress (Maria Bello), his luck starts turning good–and Shelly’s profit margins begin to whither. This displeases Shelly, which means that it could be sledgehammer time once again.

Macy plays sad-sack normality with such grace and subtlety that you can’t help but sympathize with his characters; the urge to put your arm around their shoulders is so great, in fact, that it often disguises underwritten roles. The concept of a casino cooler whose luck changes is certainly a great gimmick, but we don’t learn much about Bernie other than the fact that he was a minor criminal for much of his life and that he has an estranged son who is following in his shaky footsteps. (Only he’s a real jerk.) Couldn’t there have been more to Bernie than his bad suit and bad luck? Writer/director Kramer supplies enough details to pique our interest in this sad, little cooler, but he doesn’t give Bernie much to do other than fret. Nevertheless, when Bernie suddenly finds himself immersed in a romance he never expected, it’s a pleasure to see Macy’s brow unfurl into a happy expression for a change.

For her part, Bello manages to be convincing as a down-on-her-luck, thirtysomething waitress who falls for a fiftysomething loser–no small feat. While such Woody Allen-style romances typically inspire winces, it’s forgivable in The Cooler–the characters find it just as unlikely as the audience, but they’re so desperate for genuine affection that they’re willing to go along with it. And so are we. But this story is all so very familiar–a tale of love among the lost that we’ve seen many times before.

Thank goodness, then, that Alec Baldwin kicks serious ass. Honest: Baldwin is the best thing about The Cooler. His Shelly isn’t just a brutish, mean-spirited Mafioso-type–he’s also the last true believer in the old ways of Vegas, a holdout against the onrushing tide of McDonaldland gaming. While he swings a mean sledgehammer, Shelly isn’t an oaf–he knows he’s fighting a losing battle in defense of his old-school casino. When the Shangri-La’s forward-thinking owners send in a slick consultant to introduce some new management ideas, Shelly responds with equal parts melancholy and viciousness. He knows his time will soon be up. Thus, he refuses to allow Bernie to leave–not only because he needs Bernie’s bad luck to stave off his pragmatic bosses, but also because Bernie is the closest thing he has to a friend. So he decides to destroy Bernie’s happiness. Shelly’s really a romantic, when you think about it.

When Baldwin is onscreen, The Cooler picks up the swagger and air of danger that the setting inspires in our oldest Las Vegas fantasies. When he’s not, the movie becomes a pleasant character study with one of our finest character actors. Certainly, that’s not a bad thing, but it’s not really a new one either.

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