Colin Farrell Bets It All in Berger’s Mesmerising Macau Tragedy

_{Colin Farrell stars as a desperate gambler in Edward Berger’s stylish morality tale, filmed amid Macau’s glittering casinos. (Image: BFI / Netflix)}

A High-Stakes Tale of Addiction and Escape

Addiction lingers like a ghost in Edward Berger’s Ballad of a Small Player, written by Rowan Joffe and screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2025. Set in the dazzling casinos and neon-lit streets of Macau, the film follows Lord Doyle, an English aristocrat chasing one last win that might redeem him, or destroy him.

As his debts mount, Doyle meets hostess Dao Ming, who offers a glimpse of escape from his spiral. But belief in luck, not salvation, keeps Doyle tethered to the table. When an unexpected visitor from England arrives, the façade crumbles, and the real cost of his gambling comes due.

A Visual Feast with a Bleak Core

Cinematographer James Friend captures Macau in all its luminous excess. Under Zoe Lee Tak-Nga’s art direction, every frame glows with the saturated colour of temptation: the casino floors gleam, hotel lobbies sparkle, and fireworks illuminate a skyline that seems too perfect to be real.

Yet beneath the spectacle lies rot. When daylight hits, Berger strips the colour away, revealing dull concrete and a sludge-colored beach, a striking metaphor for the moral decay beneath Doyle’s gilded world.

Farrell’s Masterclass in Controlled Chaos

Colin Farrell delivers one of his strongest performances to date, embodying a man unravelling beneath layers of charm and denial. His Doyle is both confident and terrified, a gambler who believes he can outplay fate even as it consumes him.

Berger and Joffe’s narrative sometimes drifts, particularly in later sequences aboard a houseboat, and Tilda Swinton’s cameo as debt collector Cynthia never quite anchors the tension as intended. But Farrell’s work alone keeps the film gripping, a reminder of why he’s become one of Britain’s most versatile actors.

A British Tradition of High Rollers

Ballad of a Small Player joins a long tradition of British-led dramas in land based casinos exploring luck, loss, and redemption. From Daniel Craig’s steely precision in Casino Royale (2006) to Clive Owen’s existential turn in Croupier (1998), UK actors have long been drawn to stories where risk defines identity.

Michael Caine played the archetypal suave con artist in Gambit (1966), while Idris Elba brought gravity to Molly’s Game (2017) as a lawyer defending an underground poker queen. Even Ray Winstone’s role in King of Thieves (2018) channelled the allure and corruption of quick riches.

Farrell’s Doyle fits neatly into this lineage, a spiritual cousin to these gamblers and hustlers, undone by the same seductive mix of power and despair.

Beautiful, Bleak, and Worth the Bet

While Ballad of a Small Player falters in pacing, it remains one of the most visually sumptuous entries at this year’s London Film Festival. Its moral clarity and elegant craft make it more than another casino melodrama; it’s a meditation on compulsion, framed through the shimmering lens of greed.

As Doyle learns too late, the house always wins.

Ballad of a Small Player is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2025 from 8-19 October.