The Cooler
Starring: William H. Macy, Maria Bello, Alec Baldwin, and Ron Livingston
Directed by: Wayne Kramer
Screenplay by: Frank Hannah and Wayne Kramer
Release Date: In theatres now
Lions Gate Films
When I see movies like The Cooler, one question always comes to mind: Why can't Hollywood make more movies like this? Is there some bylaw that decrees that smart dramas with equally smart direction, screenwriting and acting must be made independently?
There are countless other cleverly made films like The Cooler. The fact of the matter is these movies aren't a dime a dozen, and to search for them is often too strenuous for the average moviegoer. A movie like The Cooler should be widespread, not just at the Camelview 5. I can't imagine why you'd want to hide a movie like this in an arthouse theater. It's too damn good.
Of course, to buy into The Cooler, you must buy into this simple premise: In Las Vegas, for years, casino bosses have had employees known as "coolers." These coolers have an easy job: stop the good luck of the regular gamblers. If someone is on a huge winning streak, a cooler will hang around the table for a few minutes to chat someone up. The cooler will do anything necessary to make the good luck vanish. This is a big myth in the lore of gambling, and all casino pit bosses will deny it to be true, but they all seem to know exactly what a cooler is. Hmm.
Bernie Lootz (William H. Macy) is one such cooler, and he's probably the best in the business. He works at the Golden Shangri-La, an old-school casino not yet infected by big, flashy musical productions, or as Shelly Kaplow, pit boss at the Shangri-La, calls it: "Disneyland crap." Lootz is such a good cooler, he has no good luck at all. The reason he's so good is because he is a loser in every sense of the word. He lives in a dingy motel room, his cat ran away and he has no family or friends aside from Shelly (Alec Baldwin), who once crippled him by beating him up with a baseball bat. To top that off, he can't ever get cream in his coffee before the cream runs out. His only beacon of hope is that in one week, he'll have paid off a debt to Shelly, and will be free to leave the casino forever.
The trouble lies with Shelly. Lootz is certainly a great cooler: He's never off. Losing Lootz would be bad for business, which is changing. Other owners of the casino want Shelly to help change the Shangri-La into something more like the Bellagio or the MGM Grand by building roller coasters, IMAX theaters, family entertainment and other things. Shelly's entire life and thought processes are collapsing around him. One night, the situation gets even worse when Natalie, a beautiful yet hard-bitten cocktail waitress (Maria Bello) asks Bernie to come have a drink with him. That same night, they have sex.
And my, it's graphic. I am sure there have been more graphic sex scenes in other mainstream movies (by which I mean, "not porn"), but The Cooler's sex sequences are up there. There is nudity, of both kinds, but it's not gratuitous: The audience is supposed to see how awkward Bernie is, and how the sex liberates him.
Natalie and Bernie begin a strange, yet passionate, relationship in a span of a few days, and very soon funny things begin to happen. Bernie begins to get good luck. People win more when he's around, he looks better, feels better, his cat comes back and there is always enough cream for him. However, with Shelly getting desperate on the one hand and Bernie's estranged son and his pregnant girlfriend on the other, that good luck may not be around for long.
The Cooler reeled me in. Of the twists in the movies, there are a few that should be expected, yet I was bowled over by them. Only once in the movie was I able to predict what was going to happen, and what did happen onscreen was pretty clever.
It's great to be watching a movie that isn't stupid, and doesn't insult audiences' intelligence. Have you ever noticed how most romantic comedies have conflicts within them that could be resolved if someone just said something? Even in the best ones, such as About a Boy, the matters could be resolved if a character admitted the truth early on. The Cooler gives us a scene that could be remade badly, by drawing out conflict until it becomes irritating. I won't reveal the details or outcome of the scene, but the setup and payoff are both smartly done. The characters may not seem it, but they are shrewd, which is always a good thing in the movies.
Credit Frank Hannah and Wayne Kramer for the clever characters. The screenwriters (Kramer also directed the film) create a world so believable and so real that you're sucked in immediately. It is always a wondrous thing to forget that you're watching a movie. If you can feel like you're right there next to the characters, urging them on, never once thinking it's fake, the makers of that movie have succeeded magnificently. So it is with The Cooler.
But when you have an actor like Macy in the title role, how can you go wrong? Macy is one of the great character actors, and a great sad-sack on the big screen. I could imagine very few actors aside from him taking this role (Steve Buscemi comes to mind also, but other than that, I'm drawing a blank). Macy makes us root for Lootz and hope he gets through things and can stand up to Shelly. His comic scenes also are memorable. Seeing him smile for the first time is a revelation: It's like it's the first time Lootz has smiled in a very long while.
Bello also does a fine job as Natalie, the cocktail waitress who's ashamed of her past. Bello conveys a sense of pleased shock well: Natalie often seems stupefied that any guy would love her as Bernie does. How can you blame him, however? Her vibrant personality and world-weary demeanor make her even more pleasing to watch.
And the biggest kudos must go to Baldwin. As Shelly, he steals the movie. Shelly is a character who we're never able to really get a bead on. Is he a flat-out villain or trying to good? Certain things he does in the movie are despicable, in their own way, but Shelly is doing these things to be a good friend. Although he seems villainous, you also see Shelly's side of things. He's losing his footing in the world of the casino, and Baldwin is fantastic in showing this. Not only does this absolve him from his participation in The Cat in the Hat, but he might find himself with an Oscar nomination come January.
The only quibble I have is with Joey Fatone, formerly of the "band" NSYNC. Fatone plays a new lounge singer at the casino; it's a small role, but Fatone gives me the willies. Every time he opens his mouth is excessive.
And yet The Cooler, certainly one of the best films of 2003, overcomes Fatone, by giving us a slew of fine performances, a clever script and stylish direction by Kramer. It's only a pity that some people won't see the movie because it's not at one of the big theaters. It really ought to be.
Josh Spiegel is an entertainment reporter for the Web Devil. Reach him at joshua.spiegel@asu.edu.
