Everybody run — the card-counting king has got a gun. (Images via Focus Features) The Card Counter, writer-director Paul Shrader's intense morality drama stars Oscar Isaac as William Tell, a former soldier involved in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal who used his prison stint to learn to count cards.
It is a useful skill, unlike spending time obsessing over revenge, or regret, which he seems to have identified as exhausting, pointless pursuits.
Just when he discovers his femme ... natale, lucky lady La Linda (Tiffany Haddish, in a rare dramatic role), and is ready to accept her offer to stake him on the professional poker circuit, he also meets Cirk (Tye Sheridan), whose late father also went down for Abu Ghraib — and who is frighteningly