Chicago Sun-Times

With spectacularly haunting original songs by Robert Levon Been of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club accompanying the journey, Schrader expertly captures the equal parts exciting and depressing worlds of casinos, where the slots are always jangling and the bar is always open.

A review by Richard Roeper for Chicago Sun-Times on 2021-09-09

Vanity Fair

You’ll leave the film unable to stop thinking about its dimensions.

A review by Cassie da Costa for Vanity Fair on 2021-09-02

With The Card Counter, Schrader has a sub-theme he can toss off like a light cloak, and when he does, the movie swerves into a semi-surreal realm not entirely like that of the climax of First Reformed. But then it swerves back into a variation on Bresson that constitutes one of the most brilliant shots of his career.

A review by Glenn Kenny for /reviews/publisher:

It’s truly a wild, blazing ride if you get on the movie’s bruising, mesmeric wavelength, a tragic but deeply moral film about a righteous, transactional man who has truly weighed and considered the cost of the wicked transgressions committed against his country, his fellow man, and his own soul.

A review by Rodrigo Perez for /reviews/publisher:

The Atlantic

William is a strong character on his own, but he is also a metaphor for America’s struggle to overcome its grimmest failures and to break free from cycles of violence. Schrader understands that those are nigh-impossible tasks; still, he shows the value in trying nonetheless.

A review by David Sims for The Atlantic on 2021-09-17

Los Angeles Times

Scene by scene, it pulls us into a world that coheres not just through plotting and dialogue, but through the sharp rhythms of Benjamin Rodriguez Jr.’s editing, the hard shimmer of Alexander Dynan’s images and the humdrum precision of Ashley Fenton’s production design.

A review by Justin Chang for Los Angeles Times on 2021-09-09

The New York Times

The solitary man returns in The Card Counter, a haunting, moving story of spirit and flesh, sin and redemption, love and death about another lonely soul, William Tell, who, with pen to paper, grapples with his present and his unspeakable past.

A review by Manohla Dargis for The New York Times on 2021-09-09

Arizona Republic

As with First Reformed, Schrader crashes right through the boundaries separating the literal from the surreal. It is a strange journey, increasingly so, but an immensely satisfying one.

A review by Bill Goodykoontz for Arizona Republic on 2021-09-07

Time

The Card Counter, with Isaac’s superb performance at its heart, might be the movie you didn’t know you were wishing for, coming at a time when wishing for life to restart has become a consuming preoccupation.

A review by Stephanie Zacharek for Time on 2021-09-02

New York Magazine (Vulture)

What makes The Card Counter so delicious, aside from the Mad Libs quality of the way it connects card playing and government-sanctioned torture, is that the movie undermines the Spartan swagger of William’s half-existence as often as it basks in it.

A review by Alison Willmore for New York Magazine (Vulture) on 2021-09-02

A new Paul Schrader movie is always an event and this spellbinding meditation on sin and salvation—seen through the eyes of a gambler (a superb Oscar Isaac) who counts cards to both escape and confront his torturous past—is one of his best.

A review by Peter Travers for /reviews/publisher:

Austin Chronicle

Schrader remains committed to his late-style cold moodiness, with scenes shot in a sterile plainness and lines delivered in a frank matter-of-fact tone that to some may appear stilted but effectively accompanies his main character’s harsh view of his surroundings.

A review by Trace Sauveur for Austin Chronicle on 2021-09-09

Observer

It’s not for everybody, and it’s far from perfect, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more thrillingly necessary use of the filmmaking form this year.

A review by Oliver Jones for Observer on 2021-09-10

The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

There is an urgency to these stylistic choices which ask us how we might best realize, through image and sound, both the memory and feeling of violence, of hope, of salvation for the damned. As in life, the grotesque and the beautiful exist concurrently and are each given fair weight.

A review by Sarah-Tai Black for The Globe and Mail (Toronto) on 2021-09-12

Original-Cin

A tale of trauma told, fittingly, with a poker face, Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter is a sure-handed rumination on redemption and finding peace of mind.

A review by Jim Slotek for Original-Cin on 2021-09-07

The Card Counter’s powers linger well past plot machination—its methods of approaching incident miles deeper than how they’ll play, its pauses in conversation bruising harder than anything spewed. I’m smitten with his latter-day tone-setter vibe, the stumbles amusing (I’m curious who got that horrific music into key scenes) and indulgences almost touching.

A review by Nick Newman for /reviews/publisher:

That The Card Counter shakes your faith in the writer-director’s ability to beat the odds is part of its scabrous charm.

A review by David Ehrlich for /reviews/publisher:

The Hollywood Reporter

A companion piece of sorts to First Reformed, this is another bruising character study of a solitary, burdened man who processes his most intimate thoughts in a journal, living with his guilt until he’s handed an unexpected opportunity for redemption.

A review by David Rooney for The Hollywood Reporter on 2021-09-02

Its icy conviction and unblinking Bressonian rigour generate their own particular, intoxicating strain of doom-laced excitement.

A review by Robbie Collin for /reviews/publisher:

The central relationships can be a little schematic, while the plot slaloms in and out of plausibility. Still, the cast keeps it honest and there is much to relish in the film’s moody, meditative intensity.

A review by Xan Brooks for /reviews/publisher:

San Francisco Chronicle

Schrader’s characters are haunted (please see “First Reformed” if you haven’t). They’re also deeply moral, not in a dime-store virtue kind of way but in the sense that they struggle mightily to do the right thing. In the end they’re painfully human, which is why they keep resonating after the lights go up.

A review by Chris Vognar for San Francisco Chronicle on 2021-09-09

The Seattle Times

In fact it’s really writer-director Schrader who is Isaac’s true co-star in “The Card Counter.” A product of a strict Calvinist upbringing in Michigan, the filmmaker’s trademarks — guilt, redemption, a soul in torment — are all here.

A review by Soren Andersen for The Seattle Times on 2021-09-09

The Associated Press

Toggling between Texas Hold ’Em and Iraq War nightmares makes for a head-spinning collision. But I think the incongruities of The Card Counter also give it its power. Schrader’s film is so self-evidently the impassioned work of a singularly feverish mind that its flaws add to its humanity.

A review by Jake Coyle for The Associated Press on 2021-09-09

LarsenOnFilm

With The Card Counter, Schrader offers another self-flagellating portrait of a man who’s experienced—and enacted—great sin, struggling to perceive anything akin to divine grace.

A review by Josh Larsen for LarsenOnFilm on 2021-09-09

Washington Post

With The Card Counter, Schrader has reverted to form, but he’s remade it anew at the same time. He’s done it again, with crafty, haunting power.

A review by Ann Hornaday for Washington Post on 2021-09-08

Chicago Tribune

As the title character — a professional gambler with a lot behind him, and not much impulse to dredge it up — Oscar Isaac makes for a magnetic sphinx indeed. His is not the only good performance. But it’s the crucial one.

A review by Michael Phillips for Chicago Tribune on 2021-09-08

Slashfilm

The element that keeps The Card Counter truly alive is Isaac, who turns in one of the best performances of his career here, using his eyes to convey things dialogue never could. To watch him work here is something special, even if the movie as a whole can't ever quite match his intensity. 

A review by Chris Evangelista for Slashfilm on 2021-09-02

TheWrap

Even when considering how it’s graced with splashes of stylistic bravado and how vigorously head-on it distills its heady themes (all to an extent rehashed from Schrader’s own body of work) — not to mention the decision to keep part of the gruesomeness off-screen and concluding the piece on a semi-hopeful note — The Card Counter still doesn’t come across as urgent or magnetic as other efforts.

A review by Carlos Aguilar for TheWrap on 2021-09-02

Slant Magazine

Paul Schrader’s film grows more heated and crazed as the chaos of the past bleeds into a repressed present.

A review by Chuck Bowen for Slant Magazine on 2021-09-02

The New Yorker

Above all, the film decries the impunity that the war’s masterminds and the country’s leaders enjoyed while William and other frontline grunts took the blame. It’s that notion of the prevailing order’s insidiously hermetic system of self-protection that gives The Card Counter its furious energy.

A review by Richard Brody for The New Yorker on 2021-09-14

We Got This Covered

The Card Counter marks another unique cinematic contribution from a masterful filmmaker.

A review by Martin Carr for We Got This Covered on 2021-09-03

Screen Daily

Its odd meld of drab suburban casinos, wrapped motel rooms, nightmarish Iraqi torture sequences and military correctional facilities where the furniture is bolted to the floor, all build to a video-artist vision that comes bursting surprisingly out of an old-school box – and results in one more male-slanted Paul Schrader script about a haunted man at a crossroads.

A review by Lee Marshall for Screen Daily on 2021-09-02

Variety

Part of the beauty of poker is that it doesn’t represent anything. It’s just a game. The Card Counter is a good game that forgets it’s a game by working so hard to be a statement.

A review by Owen Gleiberman for Variety on 2021-09-02

ReelViews

As a chance for Isaac to re-familiarize viewers with his serious side after spending three films in a galaxy far, far away, it’s effective. But as a character study, it’s flawed and as a narrative, it’s erratic. There are too few high cards in the movie’s deck for it to be considered a winning hand.

A review by James Berardinelli for ReelViews on 2021-09-08

Rolling Stone

The movie has real moral terror at its center. It gets ugly: It gives that word fresh resonance. This is where it gets things right — what will, one hopes, make it worth remembering.

A review by K. Austin Collins for Rolling Stone on 2021-09-27

The New Yorker

What’s discomforting about The Card Counter is that Schrader builds this strong moral backdrop for his characters and then allows them to drift about in front of it.

A review by Anthony Lane for The New Yorker on 2021-09-13

Paste Magazine

It’s clear both The Card Counter and First Reformed are cut from that same cloth, though the latter sticks the landing better than the former.

A review by Lex Briscuso for Paste Magazine on 2021-09-09

The A.V. Club

The grace notes—including a final shot that could, potentially, be Schrader’s most sublime—are lost among the inconsistencies, incomplete subplots, and airlessness. It shouldn’t take an expert to figure out what a film is trying to articulate. Unfortunately, in this case, it does.

A review by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky for The A.V. Club on 2021-09-08

Schrader’s made a long meditation on something that’s right up his alley, and it still feels incomplete while it’s in progress, and even in the final reckoning.

A review by Roger Moore for /reviews/publisher:

IGN

Ultimately, this storied provocateur deals out shocking imagery and disturbing scenes, but he refuses to lay down a thrilling climax much less anything satisfyingly entertaining.

A review by Kristy Puchko for IGN on 2021-09-09

Boston Globe

The constant sense of low-grade menace that helps make the first quarter of The Card Counter intriguing and effective gets put on hold, in a good way, whenever Haddish is on screen.

A review by Mark Feeney for Boston Globe on 2021-09-09