For the last few years, director Edward Berger has been on a hot streak. His 2022 All Quiet on the Western Front was a surprise hit at the Oscars, earning nine nominations — including one for Best Picture — and taking home four awards. Last year, Berger made his best work so far with Conclave, a twisty ensemble thriller set in the Vatican that was one of 2024’s best, and also earned eight Oscar nominations, with a win for Best Adapted Screenplay. Berger has been on a roll, and in just a few years, has become a director whose involvement in a project immediately makes it something worth checking out. But everyone runs out of luck, and that’s exactly what’s happened with Berger’s exhausting, over-directed, and shallow film for Netflix, Ballad of a Small Player. In the film, we meet Lord Doyle, a gambler who presents himself with an air of importance, a bluff that he’s a grand, important man, when really, it’s all a facade. The same thing is true about Berger’s latest: it’s a film full of flash and attempts to make this seem more essential than it is, when really, it’s a hollow, empty experience.
‘Ballad of a Small Player’ Is One Big Bluff

The first word we hear from Lord Doyle in Ballad of a Small Player is “fuck,” waking up in a sloppy Macaw hotel room, and it’s a sentiment that carries throughout the rest of the film. Soon after, he states that “in a few days, my life as I know it will be over,” and it’s easy to see why. Lord Doyle is a man of excess, from the way he gambles to the over-the-top outfits he dons. He states that he’s a “foreign ghost” in this gambling capital of the world, and yet, the way he peacocks around makes it seem like he wants to prove this wrong. Lord Doyle has been down on his luck for a while, and now, he owes pretty much everyone money, including the hotel he’s staying at and a private investigator (Tilda Swinton, in what can best be described as a Napoleon Dynamite wig) who is following Doyle around, sent by British financiers to get their money back. One night at the Rainbow Casino — the only one left that will give him credit — Lord Doyle meets an employee, Dao Ming (Fala Chen), who takes a liking to this loser. With only a few days left to pay his debts, Lord Doyle needs to become a winner to make the money he needs. This sounds like the beginnings of an interesting concept, but Ballad of a Small Player is full of indecipherable decisions and no stakes. Imagine Uncut Gems, but if you never really felt any danger for Adam Sandler’s Howard Ratner. That’s sort of the space Berger’s film exists in. Each scene rarely feels connected to the scene that comes after it, and things just sort of happen so that the screenplay by Rowan Joffeé, based on the novel of the same name by Lawrence Osborne, can keep moving. We never really understand why Dao Ming wants the company of Lord Doyle, nor do we understand most of his decisions. Sure, we can understand why he would gamble against ludicrous odds, but choices like having him choke down food at a buffet until we can hear his heart ready to burst only seem to exist for Doyle to make things even worse for himself. It’s all so ridiculous and without any weight to it.
Edward Berger’s Directing Is Exhausting, but Colin Farrell Delivers

Ballad of a Small Player also makes Berger fall back onto his most obnoxious stylistic choices, with a film that is far too flamboyant for its subject matter. Even if Lord Doyle is just walking down the street, Berger will make sure there’s a Dutch angle framing him, and the absurdly blaring score by Volker Bertelmann might be the only thing to jolt you awake. Like Doyle, Berger is trying to show off for the sole purpose of ensuring no one sees how little sense this story makes, or how little in general is actually happening here. At the very least, this does give Farrell a preposterous character to sink his teeth into, and Farrell has often excelled with roles that are excessive. Lord Doyle certainly falls into that category, with his Clark Gable mustache, his yellow gloves that he wears while playing baccarat, and the constant layer of sweat that disrupts the entire illusion of cool he’s going for. In playing a character who needs to feel like he’s being pushed to the brink at every step of the way, Farrell does nail that, but the script itself doesn’t give Lord Doyle enough to do, even if Berger’s camera also wants us to believe something exciting is happening as well. Ballad of a Small Player tries to find something for the audience to latch onto with the sort of relationship between Lord Doyle and Dao Ming, but it’s so irrelevant and nonsensical that it’s hard to see it more than just the lame plot device that it is. By the end, when we’re supposed to be invested in Doyle’s plight, the film hasn’t given us any reason to care, nor has it made us feel the stress of this situation to a point that we can empathize with the journey we’ve been dragged along for. Even though Berger’s camera is almost always doing too much, at least Ballad of a Small Player does mostly look good. Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Patrick Melrose cinematographer James Friend does make Macaw look stunning, and the glow from the neon lights throughout the city seem to loom over Lord Doyle as he tries to find a solution to his problem (which is likely gambling more, and ultimately, losing). Ballad of a Small Player on paper has all the pieces for a film that could’ve been an exciting, intense project, especially given Berger’s flair for building tension, and Farrell’s ability to really give any performance his all. But instead, Ballad of a Small Player is a tiring mishandling of what this story could be, a film that strains its bare concept into a lax, unremarkable tale of a man pushing himself to the brink, then being surprised when he’s once again hit rock bottom. If Ballad of a Small Player tells us anything, it’s that Edward Berger’s hot streak has run cold. Ballad of a Small Player screened at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. It will have a limited release on October 15, before coming to Netflix on October 29.

Release Date

October 15, 2025

Runtime

101 Minutes

Director

Edward Berger

Producers

Matthew James Wilkinson, Elle Gibbons, Mike Goodridge

Pros & Cons

Colin Farrell is decent as a gambler down on his luck by a lot.
The cinematography does make Macaw look quite gorgeous.

Edward Berger’s directing is obnoxious and lacks any tension this story requires.
Volker Bertelmann’s score is irritating and overused.
This script really doesn’t give any upward momentum or stakes for us to care about this story.