Croupier (DVD)

== CROUPIER == Released in 1998 and Directed by Mike Hodgen (Get Carter). Croupier stars Clive Owen, Gina McKee, and Alex Kingston. Set in London, Casino falls under the category Crime/Drama. == SYNOPSIS == Narrated in the third person by Jack (Clive Owen), this is an interesting film about a frustrated writer, Jack, who is suffering with writers block. Uninspired, and with no real direction in his life, his father (Nicholas Ball) suggests a job for him at a friends casino in London. Jack is already a professional croupier having worked as a dealer in South Africa. He lives with his long suffering girlfriend Marion (Gina ...  Read the complete review

I had never even heard of Croupier before and decided to rent it as a hit or miss and it was a surprisingly good movie. If you don't like Clive Owen, then you really will not enjoy this one because it is a very extreme Clive Owen; very wooden but in my opinion, talented actor. I thought his performance was perfect for the role. His calm and carefully written narration is excellent and adds alot more to the movie then you even notice while watching it. The main plot of Croupier is centered around Clive Owen as Jack Manfred; a writer... with nothing to write. With income becoming a problem, he takes a job at a local casino as a croupier. You get a ...  Read the complete review

Let's get straight to the point. This supposed hidden gem has been so hyped by American reviews that it will either bowl you over or leave you questioning what all the fuss was about. It says a lot for the British film industry that it takes commentators state side to convince the execs in the UK to re-release their own film to their native audience but better it be this way than to not happen at all. The prospect of a Mayersberg (screenwriter) / Hodges (director) combination had me excited, if nothing else for the opportunity to see the work of two talents back on the big screen but I will come clean and admit from the off that I felt a little cheated at what was ...  Read the complete review

In the seventies, a film directed by Mike 'Get Carter' Hodges and written by Paul 'Man who fell to Earth' Mayersberg would have been massive, a huge event, remembered and revered. Now, FilmFour give them what must have been peanuts to make one of the best British films of the last decade and then proceed to throw the movie away. This film nearly bypassed cinemas and video for a straight-to-TV premiere. Picked up in a clutch of Brit flicks for release in America, 'Croupier' suddenly caught the attention of the critics, and made a respectable profit. Now, three full years after it was made, 'Croupier' has finally been allowed the attention ...  Read the complete review

Croupier is directed by Mike Hodges, a man who has produced such diverse works of genius as Get Carter and, of course, Flash Gordon. Get Carter, an undeniably great film, provided one of the models for the scores of dismal British gangster movies inflicted on us recently. Strangely though, when Hodges himself chose to return to the genre the resulting film sank without trace. Croupier was funded by Channel 4, who premiered it on TV in 1998 after concluding that it wasn’t good enough for general release. Ignored by the British, it proceeded to cross the Atlantic and do unexpectedly good business. The Americans loved it, and now the distributors have given us a ...  Read the complete review