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Synopsis: Aspiring writer, Jack, relates his career as a croupier in London's Golden Lion casino. Jack's career as a writer is going nowhere fast. His publisher wants a hackwork "soccer novel," the writing of which Jack seems incapable of doing. He doesn't have the intestinal fortitude. His father calls him as he types the title and says he has a job for Jack, as a croupier. Jack, it seems, has a gambling past. "I don't gamble," he tells everyone who asks him throughout the movie. He repeats it like a mantra. The life of a croupier, on the other hand, puts the reigns in his hands. The croupier is in control, and Jack likes that. His girlfriend doesn't like it, though. To her, he has lapsed into a shadow existence. When Jack turns his writing talent to the life of a croupier, she sees in it a hollow zombie. One day, a femme fatale walks into his life. She asks his complicity in a robbery of his casino. He doesn't need to do anything crooked, even. He just has to catch a cheat in the act. She gives him ten thousand dollars for the job. Jack figures the odds and, despite his assertion that he doesn't gamble, he places his bet. The result is a personal apocalypse for him. But that isn't the end of the movie. The twisty turny chain of events reveals th at Jack's feeling of control is illusory. He isn't in control and never has been. At the end of the movie, the roulette wheel spins a final time and it comes up double zeroes. Everyone loses.

The Chump's Game: This is a terrific movie. Mike Hodges has made a number of films since Get Carter put him on the map, but it seems like this is his next film. It is a calculating, manipulative, cold hearted, amoral film that provides a dark, bitterly ironic thrill. Clive Owen is fascinating as Jack. He exudes a calm self-assurance that provides a wonderful mask for the chaos that seems to be raging just under his surface. He lets the beast out twice: once when he is confronted on the street by a man he caught cheating and once after the robbery has gone down when he identifies his girlfriend in the morgue. These are the key to his performance and to the movie itself, I think. Jack is seeking calm and control: at the beginning of the movie, Jack's third-person voice-over narration tells us that "Finally, the croupier had reached a place where he no longer heard the sound of the ball." This is repeated at the end of the movie, but the audience has seen enough to know that the chaos has broken him. He has written his book and reaped enormous rewards for it, he has rebuilt his life, but he is a hollow shell of a man. He is the zombie his girlfriend accused him of being. And at the end of the movie, he becomes the very symbol of the house as he sweeps the table clean of chips after the ball lands on that double zero.