Certificate: 15

Running Time: 102 mins

UK Distributor: Netflix

UK Release Date: 29 October 2025

WHO’S IN BALLAD OF A SMALL PLAYER?

Colin Farrell, Fala Chen, Tilda Swinton, Deanie Ip, Alex Jennings, Jason Tobin, Adrienne Lau

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Edward Berger (director, producer), Rowan Joffe (writer), Mike Goodridge and Matthew James Wilkinson (producers), Volker Bertelmann (composer), James Friend (cinematographer), Nick Emerson (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

In Macau, a high-stakes gambler (Farrell) must reckon with his guilty conscience…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON BALLAD OF A SMALL PLAYER?

More than once whilst watching director Edward Berger’s Ballad of a Small Player, you will think to yourself: “wait, this is by the same guy who made All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave?” That’s because Berger’s adaptation of Lawrence Osborne’s novel of the same name is, stylistically speaking, such a radical departure from the filmmaker’s more streamlined recent work that you’d be forgiven for thinking it was someone else like Danny Boyle or Guy Ritchie behind the camera instead.

Of course, that’s not to say that directors can’t every now and then experiment with how they approach certain material, and at this point Berger has earned enough credibility in the industry to venture outside his comfort zone and explore new filmmaking styles to add towards the one he’s already established. With Ballad of a Small Player, the director does just that by applying a heavy neon-drenched visual filter as well as faster-paced editing tricks and bold camera angles to illustrate the enticing yet ultimately dangerous world we spend the entire movie in, which at the very least makes it a rather bold film to look at.

However, that doesn’t necessarily make the script by Rowan Joffe any deeper or more complex, for it is the narrative leaps which ultimately hinder the film from being more than just a visual spectacle.

The film takes place in the Chinese city of Macau, a gambler’s paradise that makes Las Vegas look like your average Betfair high street shop. One such gambler is a well-dressed, well-spoken chap known as Lord Byron (Colin Farrell), a high-rolling nobleman who’s raking up debts left, right and centre at his hotel and across the city’s many casinos, due in part to his rather crippling gambling addiction and his even worse luck at baccarat, his card game of choice. The desperate lord is soon thrown a lifeline by mysterious casino employee Dao Ming (Fala Chen), but unbeknownst to her and most others – save for private investigator Betty Grayson (Tilda Swinton) who’s hot on his trail – he’s not an actual English lord but rather a cocky Irish con man who stole a great deal of money from his elderly employer and is now attempting to live a life of indulgence that is about to come crashing down on top of him.

By the way, that’s not a spoiler from later in the movie, as you’re fully made aware of the deception around the end of the first act, by which point it’s hard to not understand what’s going on since Joffe’s script spells out the obvious so often that subtlety ends up being a rare luxury. This is a film that, for all its visual prowess, often finds itself describing certain things in detail rather than showing most of them in action, whether it’s characters’ backstories or their motivations which are largely dumped onto the viewer during a number of expository scenes that make the 100-odd minute film feel longer. Sometimes, there’s so much information being dropped on you at once that it’s easy to lose track of what you’re meant to store for later, to where you’ll forget about certain major characters until they’re suddenly brought back into the fold, slap bang in the middle of a dozen other things going on that are difficult to keep up with, among them a late twist that’s telegraphed so hard much earlier that it’s a wonder why they even left it to be a twist at all.

The crucial missing element that could have made all the obviousness easier to forgive is a genuine investment in the main character, and that lack of intrigue in his arc makes this guy more of an annoyance than a compelling lead. While Colin Farrell is admittedly giving it his all in a terrific performance, one where you can really feel the actor push himself mentally and physically in ways you might not have seen him do before, the character of so-called Lord Byron is one that you find yourself wanting to punch fairly often. That isn’t just due to his lack of morals and tact when his addictive side fully takes over, but also for the ways in which he actively tries to screw other people over in order to further his own selfish ambitions, even those who are trying hard to help him out of his endless spiral. The film tries to paint this character’s journey as a redemptive arc but there’s little to suggest that there’s any part of Byron that’s worth saving, and the very few parts that are will no doubt be swallowed whole by his bad vices soon enough, leaving us even less of a reason to care.

Still, what saves Ballad of a Small Player from succumbing to its flaky and rather superfluous script is the fact that it is, from a purely visual standpoint, quite gorgeous to look at. Through James Friend’s cinematography, which bathes in the constant neon glow of Macau and its dingy streets, hotel corridors and casino halls, Berger creates a lively atmosphere that’s appealing in its artificiality, while the flashy editing injects it with a heavy dose of adrenaline that practically seduces the viewer into the seediness of this world. It’s a film that you can easily watch with the volume turned all the way down, for while there is some solid sound design (particularly the tight grasp of Byron’s urine-yellow leather gloves as he slowly counts his cards), the visuals are far more captivating than any of the dialogue being uttered, or even the somewhat forgettable score by Volker Bertelmann, who previously gifted the director with far more memorable melodies for his previous two films.

From a visual perspective, as well as Farrell’s committed lead turn, Ballad of a Small Player could have held its head above water just fine if it weren’t for the dreary script dragging it further down.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Ballad of a Small Player is visually impressive and barely held together by a terrific lead turn by Colin Farrell, but its overly obvious and heavy-handed script makes it a lesser outing for director Edward Berger.

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