This movie was infinitely weirder than I expected. I expected a David Mamet-ish Casino story. The Cooler is half that, with Alec Baldwin turning in a performance I’m sure he’s done a hundred times before (somebody explain the Oscar nomination… second thoughts, don’t bother…), and ditto William H. Macy (not to say I didn’t enjoy both performances). Mark Isham’s jazz score sets a mood you just have to slink along to, but then there’s the dash of … well, a fairytale. Macy has the gift of bad luck and if some guy comes to the casino and starts winning too much, he is sent to their table to “cool” it. Then he falls in love and becomes the luckiest guy in Las Vegas, much to the enragement of Baldwin, who owns the casino.

All this is fair enough. It winds up violent and foul-mouthed and on a rooftop where Macy uses his love like a weapon against Baldwin, a lot like Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love (“I have a love in my life. It makes me stronger than anything you can imagine.”) This is a great scene, and it’s a great love story.

What I couldn’t bear was the ending, one final stroke of good luck that ends the movie on what I believe is a major dud note. Stories like this do not end happy. Maybe that’s what the film makers were addressing, and this is their way of being different. But it would have been so much more fitting to go out sour. Isham’s score is begging for it. It’s so lonely, so helpless. But that’s just my thoughts. Otherwise, this is one heavy movie.

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