Croupier [dir. Mike Hodges]

In Mike Hodges' Croupier, a young Clive Owen plays Jack Manfred, a struggling author with some history as a croupier (that's a casino dealer). While initially reluctant, he is persuaded by his fast-talking shady entrepreneur father into taking up a croupier post at a local casino. As an employee Jack has to follow the house rules - no relationships with customers or fellow croupiers, and if you spot anyone cheating, report it. Working at the casino seems to evoke something deep in Jack. He enjoys the feeling of dealing out the fortunes of the gamblers, of seeing the losers ruin themselves. He starts writing a novel about a croupier called Jake, an obvious alter-ego. In traditional hard-boiled noir fashion we get a good bit of inner monologue voice-over from Jack/Jake.

Jack's live-in girlfriend Marion (Gina Mckee), a former policewoman turned store security agent, is not pleased at the change in him after the new job. Meanwhile Jack doesn't always play by the workplace rules. He hangs out with one colleague who he has observed cheating without reporting him, has a one-night stand with another when she comes to his aid after an assault by a disgruntled patron. The crux is when an attractive female gambler Jack seems to be developing feelings for (Alex Kingston) brings him a proposal to help with carrying out a heist at the casino.

In another movie this heist would be the film's centerpiece, and it would end with Jack emerging as the hero after battling both his manipulators and his own conscience. But in the screenplay from Paul Mayersberg (who wrote two David Bowie vehicles - The Man Who Fell to Earth and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence), Croupier isn't as straight-faced a caper as that. It's more about the effect the casino world has on Jack as a person, how it makes him do things he thought he wouldn't. At several points in the film Jack repeats "I never gamble", but the increasingly dangerous manner in which he violates the house rules and even considers accepting a part in the heist suggest a deep gambler complex within.

After sitting through Shoot 'Em Up, whose appeal was lost on me, for a long time I hated Clive Owen's surly face. But I have to admit, he can be really good in the right part. Along with the off-beat SF thriller Children of Men (reviewed HERE), this is another solid vehicle for the actor. Owen's poker-faced opacity makes him perfect for the lead part; you cannot predict the direction of his moral compass  At one point, when he tells Marion, "You are my conscience." she retorts with "Don't you have one of your own then?". The answer might well be no. But his Jack is no villain either - when he discovers that Marion has betrayed him with regards to the heist, it does not embitter him or reduce his affection for her. At the end, when he learns how he was set up for the heist, his response is not anger, but a cynical chuckle about how he was part of a larger gamble. Such murkiness does mute the adventure aspect of the film, but it gives us a more nuanced noir drama where the 'happy ending' is an amorphous entity.

A few words on the UK Limited Edition (LE) blu-ray package from Arrow Video (There is also a 4K UHD version for those so equipped):

Arrow's transfer is sourced from a recent 4K restoration which looks smashing. At least  to my untrained eye, there don't appear to be any revisionist color grading anomalies, and both detail and film-like appearance are pleasing. The lone audio track is lossless PCM 2.0 (The back cover mentions a 5.1 surround track but it's definitely not present in the setup menu) - this is a decent track although not particularly aggressive, and it does require raising your volume setting a few notches above usual. Extras on the disc include two commentaries and multiple lengthy interviews with selected cast and crew. The LE has a bonus disc with a career-spanning documentary on Mike Hodges, whose other films include the gritty working class crime drama Get Carter and the ultra-flamboyant Flash Gordon movie.

Interestingly, the movie disc is labeled as disc 1, so I wonder if they are planning a separate pressing for the standard edition release or will the Hodges documentary not remain the LE exclusive it currently is.