Review: Ballad of a Small Player

In the movies, at least, Macau seems as far away from a real city as you can get, a futuristic dreamworld of neon reflected on water, of shiny Emerald City-style architecture, an Eden of gambling where you could just as easily lose your soul as your shirt. In Edward Berger’s floridly stylized drama Ballad of a Small Player, Colin Farrell plays a compulsive gambler who’s on his way to losing both. He goes by the name Lord Doyle, though he’s hardly a lord, and he’s not even a Doyle. He favors velvet jackets worn with open-collared shirts, a jaunty silk scarf at the neck, a disguise that allows him to prowl the casinos of Macau like self-appointed royalty. But not only has he done some pretty bad stuff in the process of building that façade; he’s on a terrible losing streak, and the cas