Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2025 Telluride coverage. Ballad of a Small Player is now in theaters and arrives on Netflix on October 29.
In Ballad of a Small Player, we are given the gift of Colin Farrell overdoing it. Nobody overdoes it like Colin Farrell, and to take this for granted is a disservice. Written by Rowan Joffé (based on Lawrence Osborne’s 2014 novel) and directed by Edward Berger, it stars Farrell as a gambler who calls himself Lord Doyle. He’s been relegated to Macau, the “Las Vegas of Asia,” and has nearly run out of money. He owes all over and cannot help himself. At the last casino in the city that will take a bet from him, Lord Doyle meets Dao Ming (Fala Chen) and sees in her a potential solution to all of his problems. This is, of course, ridiculous––not unlike most of Ballad of a Small Player.
But then, Berger has made prestige ridiculousness his calling card. Composer Volker Bertelmann is back again, and he’s no less loud and obtuse. These are compliments, mind you. This is a fun, bleak motion picture––maximalism at its most maximalist. Cinematographer James Friend (who won an Academy Award for All Quiet on the Western Front) reunites with Berger and highlights every conceivable color throughout the narrative. There is nary a pink that is not popped by some special light. Macau is positioned as some sort of neon-gilded hellscape, where all of your dreams come true and then promptly turn into nightmares.
Tilda Swinton puts in hysterically goofy supporting work as a mysterious woman searching for Lord Doyle, representing the past from which he is running. Farrell and Swinton––who both starred in Tim Roth’s unsettling The War Zone 25 years ago, though Farrell was little more than a day player there––work off each other incredibly well. Along with enough myriad canted angles to make Kenneth Branagh blush, Berger and Friend throw the camera around, producing an aesthetic that is constantly active and exciting. Card-playing in cinema is so often boring; not here. Consider Lord Doyle’s ostentatious playing gloves, or the way he bends the cards to see his hand.
Ballad‘s third act is telegraphed within an inch of its life, and what a joy it is to watch it unfold. With Berger at the helm and Farrell as his lead, there is no semblance of subtlety. No chance of nuance. This is an alcohol-soaked opera, a morality tale dripping in bombast. The best gambling movies know that the winning is the scariest outcome. And while Fala Chen’s Dao Ming is short-changed and Alex Jennings’ extended cameo is so effective that it begs for more screen time, Berger has his focus on the right subject: Farrell.
Here is a performer who has grown into his insecurities. The misaligned widow’s peak (granted, a Farrell trademark, though it fits perfectly), the pencil mustache, the terrible fake accent. Farrell playing a bad actor is some of the best acting he’s ever done. Berger knows that when his lead asks, “More or less?” the correct response is: “More. Much, much more.” Ballad of a Small Player is a delicious, nasty exuberance.
Ballad of a Small Player premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and opens in theaters on October 15 and on Netflix on October 29.
The post Ballad of a Small Player Review: A Delicious, Nasty Exuberance first appeared on The Film Stage.
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