Ballad of a Small Player (2025) Dir. Edward Berger

A conman addicted to high stakes gambling takes refuge in Macau, China, after his debts catch up with him. As he tries to make enough money to pay back his mountain of debt, he starts getting premonitions of ghostly beings as he sinks deeper and deeper into his addiction.

When I heard the latest Edward Berger film would be playing at the London Film Festival this year, I was ecstatic. I thought his remake of All Quiet on The Western Front was great, but I absolutely adore last year's Conclave. Knowing that this movie was another adaptation of a Lawrence Osborn novel and had Colin Farrel as the lead, needless to say I was hooked. Furthermore, both All Quiet and Conclave won best film at the Bafta’s. My expectations were high. But sadly, this film is a bit mediocre by Berger’s standards.

Edward Berger undoubtably has a strong visual style. The dazzling of the Chinese neon aesthetics mixed with the theatrical flair of high stakes gambling made for absolutely phenomenal visuals. There is this overwhelming feel of grandeur throughout most of this film, mixed with the stress of a forever indebted main character. The gambling scenes are truly fantastic.

Berger's frequent collaborator Volker Bertelmann returns to do the score of this film. As much as I love the Conclave score, this is easily the best score of the three movies. Its bombastic and epic and really filled me with a sense of extravagance. The visuals paired with this score is one of my favourite cinematic experiences of the year. Even the ending music is fantastic. It is absolutely one of my favourite scores of the year.

Collin Farrel is incredibly superb in the leading role, slipping into the many personas of the main character with ease, and really embodying the stress and thrill of trying to win back as much money as possible, as well as getting away with morally grey activities.

Regrettably, this film does fail in its fundamentals. Whilst all which I have spoken about is amazing, possibly due to Berger’s involvement, none of that saves this film from the fact that it’s just not that interesting. In Berger’s previous films it really felt like he had a foot on the neck of the topics they are trying to discuss. Conclave specifically felt so culturally relevant to now and what’s going on with the world, whilst in comparison Ballad of a Small Player feels hollow and without any relevant central themes to keep me engaged. There is no drive or goal to achieve for most of this film, with the main character jumping from place to place, trying to complete side missions.

The paranormal aspect of this film also feels underdeveloped, there are a couple nods here and there, but when the big twist is revealed towards the end, to me it felt like it came out of nowhere. I wouldn't have expected something like that to happen if I didn’t already know information from trailers or the marketing. In a way I felt blindsided.

I am grateful that I got to watch this in a cinema because I feel like most of the positives, I have for this film would not be able to be replicated at home on a streaming service. I could not imagine hearing this score and seeing the visuals on a tv. Putting this film straight onto Netflix does it a massive disservice.

Whilst there is great potential here, I think Ballad of a Small Player is Edward Berger’s first misfire, and it seems he will miss out on the Bafta this time around.

★★★½

3.5 / 5

Jacob Holmes

Instagram: _jacob.holmes

Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/2vL6V