walking away
by Douglas Messerli
Frank
Hannah and Wayne Kramer (screenplay), Wayne Kramer (director) The Cooler / 2003
For
those numerous critics, accordingly, who disliked this film because of being
“pretty hokey,” they seem to miss the point. Despite Baldwin’s quite brilliant
tough-guy Actor’s Studio-like performance, Kramer’s film is pure fantasy,
having as much to do with reality as Las Vegas has to a suburban neighborhood.
If the film seems, from time to time, to create a mood of film-noir, it is lit
up with the lurid lighting of the Vegas strip. No need to look too deeply into
the shadows cinematographer James Whitaker has created.
Even
Shelly, the loveable-hateable head honcho of decaying Shangri-La, is, as the
smart young gang Ivy-leaguers who argue for a complete makeover of the casino,
describe him, a museum piece, an old-timer who believes in the values of the
original Las Vegas, presumably the personal bullying he, time and again,
employs. No need for such an old-fashioned concept of a “cooler” for them, just
paint the walls a mute color, make sure the servers are well-endowed, and play
a musical score under which are woven the words: lose, lose, lose. They offer
Shelly an architectural rendering of what they see as the new transformation,
but Shelley believes that, behind his violent bullying is at least the hope of
a truly mystical world of eternal pleasure—in return of which he takes in 135
million each year. His reaction to their kitschy vision of the new Shangri-La
is predictable:
Kaplow: [about the Vegas strip] What? You mean
that Disneyland
mookfest out there”
Huh? Come on, you know what that is?
Huh? That’s a fucking violation is
what that is. Something that
used to be
beautiful, used to have class, like a gorgeous
high-priced hooker with an exclusive clientele. Then along
comes that Steve Wynn cocksucker and knocks her up and
puts her in a fucking family way. Now she’s nothing but a
cheap, fat whore hiding behind too much fucking make-up.
I look at her and see all her fucking stretch marks, it makes
me want to cry—because I remember the way she used to be.
high-priced hooker with an exclusive clientele. Then along
comes that Steve Wynn cocksucker and knocks her up and
puts her in a fucking family way. Now she’s nothing but a
cheap, fat whore hiding behind too much fucking make-up.
I look at her and see all her fucking stretch marks, it makes
me want to cry—because I remember the way she used to be.
No matter how Satanic Shelly later becomes, you gotta love a man who thinks like that!
We
know, however, that, going against the current, as Shelly does, will
ultimately mean his end. He, as several of the film’s characters later point
out, is the real loser. Except for his inept gambling, Bernie never even tried,
is even now appreciative of his friend’s brutal act.
Yet
Bernie, despite everything, still has hope, as deeply buried away as it may be.
At the beginning of the movie, almost having paid off his gambling debt to
Shelly, he is planning to simply “walk away,” to escape the world of no clocks
or windows, the world where there is no time or place in which to live.
Attracted to a young server, Natalie Belisario (Maria Bello), who at first
understandably ignores his kindness, he is suddenly amazed by her interest in
him. A sexual encounter is evidently his first in a very long time, and he can
hardly believe his “luck.” He is startled to discover her still with him in the
morning.
The
relationship between the two gradually begins to deepen, each amazed by the
other’s gentleness and seemingly genuine feeling. The writers, however, give
Bernie another hit on the head when his no-good son Mikey (Shawn Hatosy) and
his lying girlfriend, Charlene (Estella Warren) suddenly show up, she pregnant
and the couple without money.

Always ready to play the smuck, Bernie gives them his only savings,
$3,000, which they immediately play at a Shangri-La table. Surprisingly, they
win, and Bernie’s attempt to cool them this time fails: he’s been having, as he
tells Shelly, “on and off” days.
To
settle the situation, Shelly politely asks the couple up for a drink in his
office, code, as Bernie knows, for the brutal attack in store for them. He has
no choice but to intervene, as Shelly begins beating Mikey. When he reveals
that the kid is his son, Shelly pounces, forcing him to pay hundreds of
thousands for their lives and, simultaneously, indenturing Bernie to him for
several more years. Bernie agrees to the ridiculous situation, but not before
Shelly destroys both the boy’s knees and kicks the pregnant girlfriend in her
stomach to reveal a pillow instead a swollen womb.
Despite
Bernie’s new problems, however, he and Natalie grow closer, vowing their love
to one another. Distressed about her looks, Bernie responds: “Hey. You
look in the mirror, you don’t like what you see, don’t believe it. Look in my
eyes. I am the only mirror you’re ever gonna need. You look in my eyes,
Nathalie.”
As
the days pass, so too does Bernie change. The costume designers describe how in
the early scenes, Macy was dressed in overlarge sizes that were gradually replaced
with more fitting outfits, shirts and ties of more appealing colors. Lighting
and make-up gradually turn Bernie into a joyful being. Bernie smiles, almost sings
to himself. He now has no affect whatsoever on winners. He is himself suddenly
a winner in life. Even his cat returns.
Noting the changes, Shelly calls in Nathalie, who reveals she has
fallen in love with Bernie; he warns her away, and for a few hours she leaves,
Bernie accepting the handwritten note with the tired forbearance he has all
else in his life. She soon returns, however, and his luck grows even stronger.
Both are determined, despite their recognition of the near impossibility of the
act, to walk away.
A
visit to Natalie by Shelley and his henchman, send her crashing into the mirror
she was told by Bernie to ignore, badly cutting her face. When Bernie returns
home, she reveals to him that she has been paid to be nice to Bernie, Shelley
hoping to keep him in Vegas. Nathalie also admits, however, that she has truly
fallen in love, handing over the $3,000 she has been paid by Shelley so that she
and Bernie might go off together.
Bernie pays a visit to Shelley to tell him of his plans, promising him
to continue the payments, so honest is this now lucky man. Yet, Shelley makes
clear to him that he will never get away, that if he walks he must die.
As
he is about to return to the waiting Natalie, Bernie suddenly decides to gamble
with the money, staking everything, once more, on a game of luck. No longer a
“cooler,” Bernie is suddenly hot. He wins, wins big, with Shelly forced to
attempt the role as the cooler. Returning to Nathalie, Bernie drives off,
quite literally, into the sunset. But some ways out of town he must stop,
vomiting up all the fear he has swallowed and revealing to her their big
winnings.
If
it is hard to perceive what Bernie has pulled off as a crime, one must remember
that winning such amounts is, nonetheless, treated as a crime in world in which
he and Natalie lived. A cop suddenly comes up to the car, orders them out,
forces them to their knees and is about to shoot them dead, Shelly and his
cronies waiting in a nearby car. Amazingly—one must remember that this film is
pure fantasy—a drunken driver, passing by, crashes into both the waiting car
and the cop, killing everyone except the doomed couple, who now truly can walk
away.
Back
in Las Vegas, the Ivy-League mobster, Larry Sokolov, speaks: “Gentlemen, I want
to thank you for your vote of confidence. As the new director of the casino
operations I want to make a personal guarantee to each and every one of you
that your investment in the Golden Shangri-La will be well looked after. The
future looks very bright, gentleman. Very, very bright.”
Crime has paid off, apparently, for everyone.
Los
Angeles, September 2, 2012
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