Movie Review: The Cooler

There are certain people you'll never let sweat your hand. And there are others you don't even want in the same state when you make any sort of bet. Well, if you believe that certain people are nothing but bad luck, you'll have no problem understanding the premise behind The Cooler, a brilliant new black comedy starring Alec Baldwin and William Macy.

Written by Frank Hannah and Wayne Kramer, and directed by Kramer, The Cooler features Shelly Kaplow (Baldwin), who walks and talks like the New Yorker Bugsy Siegel, but whose ideas about how to run a casino resemble the legendary Texan Benny Binion. "Old school" in every sense of the word, Shelly not only runs the Shangri-la Hotel and Casino in Downtown Las Vegas with an iron fist, he also holds on to some ancient superstitions. The most glaring, of course, is that he employs Bernie Lootz (Macy) as his "cooler." Like the character Eddie Mush in A Bronx Tale, a cooler is a person with such bad luck that it's contagious. Bernie's gift for bringing bad luck to any situation – not just his own sorry life – is so amazing that Shelly keeps Bernie on his payroll to wander around the casino. When the eye in the sky spots a winning table, Bernie simply walks over and kills a winning streak. If, for example, you had just moved all in with pocket kings and got called by ace-rag, Bernie's mere presence would guarantee an ace on the river.

The complex relationship between Shelly and Bernie is what really makes the movie work. They're best friends – but it's a bond that wasn't strong enough to prevent Shelly from kneecapping Bernie when he had to bail him out from a gambling debt. Nor does it stop Shelly from keeping Bernie in indentured servitude at the Shangri-la, where he's always ready to walk over to a craps table, guaranteeing a "seven and out."

The film begins with only a few days left on Bernie's obligation as the cooler. All Bernie can think about is getting out of Vegas, away from the decrepit motel that he calls home, where the influx of pay-by-the-hour hookers prevents him from getting the sleep he needs to forget his miserable existence. Aside from losing Bernie, Shelly's stress is compounded by the fact that the hotel's East Coast boss has brought in a Harvard hotshot, Larry Sokolov (Ron Livingston), to bring the hotel up-to-date with the palaces on the Strip. Shelly, in the same spirit of Benny Binion, wants to preserve the character of his casino and doesn't want to turn his grand treasure into the circus that those themed monstrosities have become. Larry, of course, has other ideas, including replacing the Shangri-la's longtime cabaret singer, Buddy Stafford (Paul Sorvino), with the young and hip Johnny Cappella (Joey Fatone from *NSYNC).

With his livelihood crashing down on him, Shelly becomes even more violent. In Baldwin's best performance since Glengarry Glen Ross, he punishes cheaters the old-fashioned way, including two scenes that seem eerily familiar. Shelly's deviances aren't limited to his brawn, and in a last-gasp effort to prevent Bernie from leaving town, he pays a gorgeous waitress named Natalie (Maria Bello) to seduce him. According to Variety, "Macy and Bello portray the sort of semi-klutzy, social misfit characters that, 40 years ago, might have been embodied by Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine." You'd expect Bernie and Natalie to find more bad luck together, but to Shelly's dismay, the plan backfires when Bernie and Natalie end up falling for each other. Now, all of a sudden, Bernie is lucky in love and his mere presence turns everything to gold.

Just as Bernie is ready to escape Vegas, his long-lost loser son Mikey (Shawn Hatosy) rolls into town with a pregnant girlfriend (Estella Warren) and proceeds to get caught cheating at the Shangri-la after building up a $150,000 stake. The only way for Bernie to prevent his son's backroom beating from turning fatal is to agree to stay on as the cooler. But from Shelly's point of view, Bernie's as useless as a straight draw against a made flush as long as Natalie is around, thus creating a dramatic conflict in which Bernie seemingly has no outs. You're drawing dead, of course, if you think I'm going to give away the ending!

The film was created by ContentFilm, a New York-based production company founded in 2001 by Edward Pressman and John Schmidt. Look for it in theaters in New York and Los Angeles now, and in theaters nationwide on Dec. 19.

Greg Dinkin is the author of three books, including The Poker MBA (go to www.thepokermba.com to see his revised website) and Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People. He is also the co-founder of Venture Literary, www.ventureliterary.com, a management company that works with writers to develop their material for books, film, and television.