I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Good movie but grossly overrated

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This was the first film I saw with Clive Owen in it, and it was love at first sight. He does an excellent job in a role as a down-on-his-luck writer. I could easily imagine Humphrey Bogart cast in a previous era-immediately my mind went to In A Lonely Place.The atmosphere is spot on and that, more than the serviceable plot (cannot describe without spoilers), is what makes this film. Alex kingston is amazing as Jani, the gambler and classic femme fatale who reminded me of Angelica Huston's character in The Grifters-another excellent neo-noir film. Highly recommended for UK crime thriller, neo-noir, and Clive Owen fans.

Jack Manfred is a struggling novelist in London. To make ends meet, he sells his beloved car and gets a job as a croupier at the Golden Lion Casino.Jack had previous training as such back in South Africa. He doesn't particularly like being a croupier, but he's good at it and finds a certain pleasure in watching gamblers, for who he has disdain, lose. The casino has a strict set of employee policies, including no gambling ever, no relationships with other casino employees and no fraternising at all with the gamblers - also known as the punters - outside of the casino. Although Jack cannot tolerate cheaters, he is not averse to bending rules when it suits him As time goes on, he begins to observe casino life with a certain distance, through the eyes of "Jake", the main character in his novel and his alter ego......A lot of people do not get this film because of the fact that it's jack playing out his character Jake for the second half of the film, and no the film noir some think it is.This is a man in purgatory, living a life that no one wants, starting work as his girlfriend finishes, and comes home when she is going to work, the people he meets are false, or desperate, and when he gets close, they disappear or turn out to be something different.So why not live out a fantasy world, in order to get your dream underway (writing your novel).Many have said that Owen is wooden in this, I disagree greatly here, his motivation is to play someone unattached with the real world, to appear withdrawn, after all the world he is in at work is full of fantasy and falsehood.The rest of the cast are great, and the ending lets the movie down ever so slightly, but all in all it's an amazing movie, full of vibrant images, and that undoubted cheap nineties feel.

I suppose I didn't see the same ending as many other reviewers.One gent wrote this: 'It's not the worst ending I've ever seen in a movie but I can't help feeling cheated by the last twenty minutes which sees an unlikely plot twist of Jack visiting a morgue along with some unlikely dialogue with a policeman . We're also treated to Jack having a telephone conversation which does seem ridiculous almost as though the screenwriter didn't know how to finish off the screenplay along with a faintly ridiculous final scene.'I agree. This film deserved a much better finale than it has. It pretty much ruined the movie for me.Last... is Marion's character bipolar? Or something? I guess I did miss that, as her mood swings were wider than the English Channel.

I stumbled upon this movie while channel surfing late one Saturday evening, and was hooked from the first scene I saw.I had never been that impressed by Clive Owen - thought the best thing he did was his cameo on the Extras Christmas special/series finale - but from the moment I saw him on the screen in The Croupier I was captivated. Of course, it may be because of the shock of his appearance; the film was made more than ten years ago, and Owen was youthfully slim, and had bleached out hair. However, Owen did not rely on the superficial to create his character, Jack.Jack is a cold, distant, and - as we discover by the end of the film - amoral. Is this genetic, inherited from his father? Is it because of he is a writer, and he is driven to create something on the one hand derived from his life, but on the other unique and separate? Or, is it that the most significant thing about Jack is his amorality? It is the undercurrent of amorality, or, some might choose to believe, immorality that drove Film Noir, and this is why "The Croupier" was referred to as Neo-Noir. There is an eerie coldness and bleakness to the story, the characters, sets, lighting, etc. And the amorality tale is told with precision and relish by all involved. This is a great movie if only for the fact that it was so unusual for its time.Owen's performance is not the only one of note. The whole cast is excellent, with Genna McKee a standout as Jack's very moral girlfriend and the one true and tragic victim.