Vegas is a changed city; from the ’50s through the late ’80s/early ’90s it was THE place to go for adult entertainment and kids were a nuisance best left home with Grandma. Steve Wynn, who’d grown up partly in the city as his father tried to break in with a bingo parlor, had one of those rare $50 billion insights that can create waves of change in even the biggest industries: Las Vegas can be a destination for the whole family.
So he took control of Circus-Circus, built The Mirage, with its working volcano out front and purpose-built theater for Sigfreid and Roy, and proved his concept. He went on to expand and print money with it through several more hotels including Excalibur and the Bellagio finally selling those off at huge profit; but I suppose the lure is too great and so he bought the old Desert Inn, demolished it and in a few months will open a megaresort topping even the Bellagio, initally named La Reve after a favorite Picasso painting but now known as simply Wynn Las Vegas.
The Cooler is a film about a few people in the last place on the Strip unwilling to acknowledge the power of Wynn’s vision but are forced to nonetheless. Alec Baldwin is the casino manager, set in his ways and happy with them. William Macy, the title character, is a childhood buddy of Baldwin’s and a sad sack on a losing streak so long he can barely remember its start, and his job is simply to show up at any table or machine that’s paying out to the rubes, because his luck instantly changes the results.
The drama comes out of the collision between a change in Macy’s fortune (Maria Bello! Showing that even art house movies are subject to the ridiculous age gap rule) and the arrival of a hotshot MBA (Ron Livingston, playing a role closer to Lewis Nixon in Band of Brothers than Office Space‘s Peter Gibbons) with a plan to rebuild the Shangri-La into a modern behemoth. Macy’s instant love affair turns his luck 180 degrees at exactly the wrong time for Baldwin, who needs to fend off his boss (Arthur Nascarella, a New York City cop for 20 years with a longrunning second career playing wiseguys). Livingston has brought along a scale model of what he plans to build.
Early on we get a taste of how Baldwin operates, in a few quick scenes with an old school crooner (Paul Sorvino, who definitely shows his singing chops) never able to kick his drug habit. And the explanation of Macy’s limp, part of the price he paid–to Baldwin–for running up a casino debt too large to cover. One of his better efforts, Baldwin earned Best Supporting Actor nominations for both the Oscars and Golden Globes.
Co-writer/director Wayne Kramer (not that Wayne Kramer) throws in some good plot twists and interesting characters–but what happened to the son and his girlfriend?–and I like the way he uses dirty, darker sets and lighting; enough bits of humor that earn The Cooler entry into the black humor wing. Heck, I think the motel where Macy lives is the same one used in the Tarantino starrer Destiny Turns on the Radio. The stacked endings create a nice crescendo of tension, release, tension, release and again, with a very emotionally honest confrontation to resolve the Baldwin/Macy relationship.
recommended
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