Ballad of a Small Player

Colin Farrell is exhilarating as a gambler on the slide in a film that is ultimately just too full of itself.

What happens in Macau…: Colin Farrell
Photo courtesy of Netflix.

The honourable Lord Doyle (Colin Farrell) is a gambling addict and alcoholic in Macau, deep in debt and contemplating suicide. He has until Tuesday, three days from now, to get his hands on enough money to escape his consequences. However, his high-roller persona starts to fall apart when a perseverant private detective confronts him with his past. Based on Lawrence Osborne’s novel of the same name, Ballad of a Small Player discusses the concepts of shame, self-destruction and the afterlife with a bold, rapid-fire visual mood, but it collapses in its attempt to tell the story. It’s a film which holds some potential for a gripping gambling thriller, but bites off more than it can chew.  

A lot happens in the few days the film captures, and we run head-on through it all with reckless impatience. Unlike Edward Berger’s previous work such as Conclave or All Quiet on the Western Front, it has no intention of being a precise or delicate experience. It wants maximalism and it certainly achieves it, for better and for worse. The city is bustling and screaming and bleeding neon. Every vibrant colour is fighting the others for our attention. It builds a visual style of restless camera movement, overwhelming textures, and bright lights on Colin Farrell’s infinitely sweaty face — an aesthetic that is genuinely exciting. 

Farrell’s embodiment of the desperate protagonist is alive and exhilarating. He manages to be continuously engaging even when half his time is spent peeking at half-bent cards on a baccarat table. Unfortunately, his performance and the visual styling are just about all the film has going. The exposition of the story is a mess; it’s hard to know and engage with what’s going on, and the characters themselves are hollow. Case in point: Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton), blackmailing Doyle with his past. It has so much to adapt from the world of the novel that it can’t afford to build that world with any detail or patience. We need more time to get acquainted with such a complicated domain and such complex characters in order for the story to affect us. Characters appear and move along the plot, but have shallow, rushed personal arcs. It’s hard to really care about the fate of these people when we haven’t gotten any time to know them. 

It doesn’t help that the dialogue all sounds forced and unnaturally witty. We are told exactly what we should be feeling, every emotion of every moment is rubbed in our face too much to put any effort into feeling them. Intense scenes are constantly reminding us to be on edge with loud, bombastic symphonies. The film could really benefit from some subtlety. It’s so focused on creating extremes that it ends up building nothing on its moral concepts. It makes us wish it would just embrace that style-over-substance mentality and let the characters wander around in the psychedelic city lights. Instead it tries to tackle issues of addiction and classism, only to state the obvious and leave it at that. 

There really does seem to be a moving, profound story buried under all the artificial interactions, but the script leaves no hope of surfacing it. Its intentional chaos ends up making a mess of its intended story. The film’s kaleidoscopic visual atmosphere is striking but far better than its content. It does command respect in its attempt; it is always better when a film fails by going too far than vice versa. Still, considering the talent of the team and the ideas behind the story, it’s disappointing to see the end result fall so flat. It seems they got a good hand, but just didn’t play their cards right. 

SIMSIM HEGAZZI

Cast: Colin Farrell, Fala Chen, Tilda Swinton, Deanie Ip, Alex Jennings, Alan K. Chang. 

Dir Edward Berger, Pro Mike Goodridge, Edward Berger and Mathew James Wilkinson, Screenplay Rowan Joffé, from the novel by Lawrence Osborne, Ph James Friend, Pro Des Jonathan Houlding, Ed Nick Emerson, Music Volker Bertelmann, Costumes Lisy Christl, Dialect coach Neil Swain. 

Good Chaos/Nine Hours/Stigma Films-Netflix.
101 mins. UK/Germany. 2025. UK Rel: 17 October 2025. US Rel: 29 October 2025. Cert. 15.