By Joel Williams 10/10/25 at London Film Festival
Is the way out of my situation the same way I got into it? Addiction questions that are there for the taking yet the dissection feels like the peeling back of a singular layer of skin. A destruction of lives through the addiction of gambling is never deeply explored to give this enough of an intriguing aspect other than some dazzling visuals.
Colin Farrell in “Ballad of a Small Player” Photo Credit: Netflix
Official synopsis for “Ballad of a Small Player”: When his past and his debts start to catch up with him, a high-stakes gambler laying low in Macau encounters a kindred spirit who might just hold the key to his salvation.
Directed by Edward Berger “Ballad of a Small Player” stars Colin Farrell as degenerate gambler Lord Doyle, Fala Chen as our kindred spirit Dao Ming and Tilda Swinton as private eye Blithe.
Visuals of grandeur make this a tolerable watch, colourful and spectacular in it’s setting. A neo-noir feel to the film, with neon colours that pop off the screen, the setting of Macau aids this because of the cities culture and style. Academy award winner James Friend returns to a Berger film and brings the visual flair needed for a story like this, lighting thats specific and refined flares on screen you almost forget there’s puddle deep explored themes. A setting designed to be filmed on a digital camera as it is here with a feature film debut for Coral anamorphic lenses. Described as bringing ‘excellent close focus, organic flares and subtle distortions’. You can see this in action as the neon lights flash bursting with colour and there’s a real depth to the footage we are seeing. There’s a mix of anamorphic and spherical lenses to create the films unique visual look with sequences that need the visual storytelling of anamorphic with softer more out of focus elements around Lord Doyle as he loses himself further and further. Compared to some sequences where spherical give us a more stable widescreen image as we see the surrounding landscapes of Macau.
Photo Credit: Netflix
Where it stumbles is giving us anything to care or feel intensely for. Sequences of tension where we see Doyle gamble and risk everything but it meanders repetitively in-between to the point of tediousness that the story loses you before getting to it’s next interesting sequence. There’s no expectation to feel Lord Doyle is deserving of redeeming yet when Dao Ming enters the frame we don’t learn nearly enough about her to get any sort of attachment to her story and regrets for what she has been doing or why. Colin Farrell gives an excellent performance with what he is given, showing the real physical and mental toll addiction can have and the difficulties in breaking habits. His range of ecstasy in winning to mental deterioration as he goes through withdrawals of gambling it’s quite a physical performance. Tilda Swinton was fine in her role as the private investigator but yet felt underutilised, maybe due to the caliber of actor she is I expected more but she’s charming as always.
Beautiful to look at but nothing to hold on to, create a story that I would never say isn’t worth your time seeing but themes of mental health and addiction that are shown but never explored past the surface with any sort of substance to them keep this from becoming a piece of work that could have been great.
Releasing in select UK cinemas October 17th and on Netflix globally October 29th
