Line #21 Film/TheCooler


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_cooler_2003_movie_poster.jpg]]
2
3	->''"When your life depends on losing... the last thing you need is lady luck."''
4	-->-- '''{{Tagline}}'''
5
6	Directed by Wayne Kramer, ''The Cooler'' is a 2003 drama film starring Creator/WilliamHMacy, Creator/AlecBaldwin, and Creator/MariaBello.
7
8	Unlucky Bernie Lootz (Macy) has little going for him: He lives in a dreary studio apartment in a rundown motel on the UsefulNotes/LasVegas Strip, he's [[TrappedByGamblingDebts indebted to Shangri-La casino boss]] Shelly Kaplow (Baldwin), who years earlier cured him of a gambling habit by destroying his kneecap, and he can't recall the last time he had physical contact with a woman.
9
10	Bernie's success as a "cooler" (he is so unlucky that he breaks other people's winning streaks just by standing close to them) is jeopardized when cocktail waitress Natalie Belisario (Bello) seemingly takes an interest in him, and his luck -- and that of those around him -- takes a turn for the better. What Bernie doesn't know is that Shelly has paid the woman to seduce him into staying in town. What Shelly doesn't know is that Natalie actually has fallen in love with Bernie, and vice versa.
11
12	----
13	!!Examples:
14
15	* AffablyEvil:
16	** Larry is nothing but respectful to Shelly, even as he makes it clear that his old-school casino just isn't going to cut it in the new, Disneyfied Vegas. Note: this is a guy who works for the mob, with all the violence that entails.
17	** Nicky nods along with Shelly's rant about how good and classy things used to be in Vegas, and how shitty it's gotten since. Nevertheless, Nicky's a mob boss and he's all about money. If Vegas is changing, it's changing. Also, he'll kill people.
18	* AscendedMeme: InUniverse, Bernie tells Natalie that she's an easy mark and repeats the UrbanLegend about marking people with chalk, saying that he used to do that for Shelly. In reality, mark was an old synonym for target, so marks were just people you were aiming to scam.
19	* ArmorPiercingResponse: Natalie finally cracks [[MeaningfulName Shelly's shell]] when he tells her that "I could make you disappear like ''that''! And nobody would miss you!"
20	-->'''Natalie:''' Bernie would!!
21	* AssholeVictim: A young jerkass gambler keeps taunting Nicky at the craps table. Nicky gives him a NoHoldsBarredBeatdown and Bernie has to call in security to save the guy's life.
22	* BadBoss: Shelly isn't above beating the shit out of his employees. Nicky isn't above [[spoiler:murdering Shelly breaking Larry's arm]]. Just to be clear, for all his "with all due respect", Larry is the new boss at Shangri-La, and Nicky is just a made man.
23	* BadassBoast: Shelly, to his victim, before and during an epic beatdown.
24	--> Shelly: "Now listen to me, you little Harvard turd. Lootz is all right. So he's walking out of here with everything he's got coming to him. And if you so much as touch [[ClusterFBomb one fucking hair on his fucking head, I'm going to fucking wallpaper this fucking bathroom with your fucking ass,]] you understand me? Muted tones, isn't that what you said? Huh? Huh? I can't hear you. Wait, wait a minute, there it is... blended in, at a subsonic level, like some kind of mantra: pain, pain, PAIN." (breaks his arm)
25	* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Averted with Natalie after [[spoiler: Shelly beats her up]]. Her face is still swollen, bruised and stitched up towards the end of the film.
26	* BittersweetEnding: Bernie and Natalie get out of Vegas, happy together and with a lot of cash because Bernie finally, ''finally'' won. However, the whole point of the movie is that a guy like Bernie can only exist in the golden age of FilmNoir and mafia Vegas. Shelly was the albatross around Bernie's neck, but he genuinely loved Bernie, and, just like Shelly, [[spoiler:the old Vegas is dead, murdered by the new Vegas.]]
27	* BornUnlucky: Bernie is such a magnet for bad luck, he can put an end to any gambler's winning streak just by standing next to them. That's actually how he makes a living.
28	* BullyHunter: Bernie takes advantage of his status as a professional loser to woo Natalie by getting a {{Jerkass}} who grabbed her tits [=86ed=] from the Shangri-La.
29	-->'''Bernie:''' You'll wanna hang around for this.
30	* TheChewToy: Bernie is ''the'' loser. He loses professionally. He loses so badly he makes other people lose. He lost a kneecap to gambling debts. He's a week away from retirement. People can't remember his name. He lives in a shitty motel where the walls are so thin his bed bounces when hookers fuck next door.
31	* ChildhoodFriends: Bernie and Shelly have been together for ''decades''. They used to run a small booth on Coney Island, now they run a con on a larger scale in Vegas.
32	* ClusterFBomb: Shelly likes to deliver these.
33	* CommonHollywoodSexTraits: The movie goes out of its way to avert this. The first time Natalie and Bernie have sex, he's a one-pump chump (because it's been years). The second time, it goes a lot better for Natalie, but then we get a shot of them banging the headboard against the wall ''not'' having sex, just so Bernie can get some revenge on his neighbors, and, y'know what? Natalie's and Bernie's naked asses bouncing around? Not great.
34	* CoolCar: Though the movie doesn't go out of its way to only populate Vegas with vintage cars, most of the focus does go onto classic cars. We get a shot of one driving down the strip, and Bernie drives a beautiful baby blue with a white top.
35	* CrapsackWorld: This is the dark side of Vegas. We don't get any glitz, no glamour. Nothing but sleaze. Even the mob is getting worse, giving up honor and the high life in exchange for more cash.
36	* DarkAndTroubledPast: Natalie had a son named Joe. She gave him up for adoption when she was 17, he was 1. She got a tattoo of a pair of twos, a "little Joe".
37	* DeathByIrony: After spending the movie extolling the virtues of the old way of doing things, [[spoiler: Shelly gets dealt with old school. Bullet to the back of the head by a mobster in a nice suit who surprised him in the back seat of his car.]]
38	* DeliberateValuesDissonance: In your classic FilmNoir, heroes and villains alike could slap women around no problem. But when Shelly does it, it's clear he's crossed a line, and even he feels guilty. His goal was to force Natalie to leave... but he just walks out of the room and leaves her with Bernie.
39	* DirtyCop: A cop on Nicky's payroll pulls up behind Bernie and Natalie at the end, gets them out of the car, and tells them to get on their knees after pulling his gun...
40	* DisappearedDad: What else could you expect of perennial loser Bernie? He desperately wants a relationship with his son, but his son is a {{jerkass}} with a junkie mom and a loser dad who doesn't want anything from Bernie apart from any cash he can scam from his old man.
41	* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The new Shangri-La is a tall, circular tower, with two smaller towers near each other at the base. [[spoiler:It's a penis]].
42	* DrunkDriver: One appears in the finale as a DeusExMachina by running over the corrupt cop that had been about to execute Bernie and Natalie.
43	* EarnYourHappyEnding: Bernie and Natalie have to grow a lot to show how good they are, how much they love each other, how much they're willing to do for one another, how much abuse they'll take, and how much they'll stand up to the assholes in charge of Vegas, and hot damn if it ain't worth it.
44	* EndOfAnAge: Shelly is the old school mafia Vegas. Larry and his numbers guy are the new corporate Disneyland Vegas.
45	** In a meta sense, the film marks the transition of Vegas as a seedy, high class, criminal, elite den of vice to the Disneyland seedy, high class, criminal, elite den of vice it is today. You can't really do mobster movies in Vegas set today.
46	* EstablishingCharacterMoment: Bernie limps onto the casino floor and touches a roulette table, causing ''all'' the players to lose. He sits down at the bar and asks for coffee with cream... and they're out of cream. Natalie shows up to struggle with her shitty position at the casino and forget Bernie's name. Bernie then goes out on the floor and tells the floor boss that the casino owner wants Natalie on the tables (so she can earn better tips from the gamblers, because Bernie has a crush on her).
47	* EverybodySmokes: As a love letter to the casino gangster movies, there's a lot of people smoking.
48	* EveryoneHasStandards: The two goons who drag Natalie into Bernie's motel room are disturbed when Shelly backhands her into the mirror. Even Shelly seems to have a MyGodWhatHaveIDone moment.
49	* ExactWords: When Shelly catches [[spoiler: Bernie's son Mikey]] cheating at the craps table along with [[spoiler: Mikey's girlfriend Charlene]], he asks Bernie what their lives are worth. When Bernie offers to take in another $150k in debt to spare them, Shelly still breaks [[spoiler: Mikey's]] leg, stating, "150 G's [only] buys their lives."
50	* FeetFirstIntroduction: We first meet Bernie in an ill-fitting suit and mediocre loafers, so that the film can showcase his limp.
51	* FilmNoir: Heavy sax music, a duplicitous dame, the mob, a guy who can't stop drinking whiskey, {{chiaroscuro}}...
52	* FixingTheGame: Mikey and Charlene show up at Shangri-La using loaded dice to cheat at craps. Even that can't beat Bernie's bad luck, and Shelly spots it.
53	* FlatEarthAtheist: Larry doesn't believe in "coolers". He thinks Bernie must be a sharp or a mechanic.
54	* {{Foreshadowing}}: The first time she and Bernie have sex, Natalie has to get up and get a shot of whiskey... her face is not that of a woman charmed by a DoggedNiceGuy. After they have sex, she has a ThousandYardStare.
55	* FriendshipMoment: Shelly shows this a lot. He's a gangster and he's trying to do the gangster shit, but... he cares about his people. He keeps showing he's trying to maintain the old ways of honor and brotherhood in the face of a new, uncaring, corporate era.
56	* GoodOldWays: Shelly and Nicky Fingers long for the days before Las Vegas was corporate. The former is trying to keep his casino old school despite Larry's suggestions.
57	* GoneHorriblyWrong: Shelly told Natalie to seduce Bernie so Bernie would stay in Vegas. Instead she fell in love with Bernie and, by changing his luck, will get him out of Vegas for good. Not only that, the implication is that Natalie will finally see her dreams of being a writer take off, because she and Bernie are one another's good luck charms.
58	* GoryDiscretionShot: We don't see Shelly bashing Mikey's legs with a hammer.
59	* TheGruntingOrgasm: Bernie gives one during the tune, 'Luck be a Lady Tonight' when having sex with Natalie.
60	* HeelFaceTurn: [[spoiler: Shelly, who crippled Bernie both physically and financially to begin with and destroyed him as a man over the years doesn't interfere when Bernie starts a winning streak to buy his future back at the craps table. Shelly takes it a step further by beating down his blueblood assistant when he tries to stop Bernie.]]
61	* InLoveWithTheMark: Natalie seduces Bernie because Shelly hired her to do it... and ''immediately'' falls in love with him, because he's just a really nice guy who goes out of his way to help her.
62	* InternalReveal: The third act's climax is Natalie telling Bernie that his best friend paid her to seduce him to try and keep him in Vegas.
63	* {{Irony}}: Things start going bad for Bernie when his luck turns good and he starts to win at the tables.
64	* ItBelongsInAMuseum: Larry gives us a ShoutOut when he says that "Don't get me wrong, nostalgia is great. We love nostalgia, but ItBelongsInAMuseum. I think there comes a time to decide whether you're running a museum, or you're running a casino."
65	* ItsAllMyFault: Bernie blames himself for his son being a loser. Bernie left because he knew what a loser he was and thought his son would be better off... instead his son turned out to be a loser like his dad who got his legs broken by an old school gangster.
66	* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Shelly is a gangster who's running a brutal business that involves beating the shit out of people, crippling them, and possibly the occasional murder. Still, when Bernie gets on a hot streak and gets out of the game? Shelly's happy for the poor mook.
67	* TheJinx: Bernie Lootz is employed by a Las Vegas casino to simply wander near any gambler who is winning too much. Because of his aura of bad luck, the gambler will instantly start losing.
68	* JobTitle: The Cooler.
69	* {{Joisey}}: Apart from Bernie, the old-school characters tend to have joisey accents. Shelly is an old-school mob boss who looks out for her friends. Natalie's a girl whose family kicked her out after she got pregnant in high school and came to Vegas to try to make it as a show girl.
70	* KickTheDog: Shelly straddles the line between jerkass and monster, like a lot of mobsters. He crosses it first by threatening Natalie to give her to break up with Bernie via note, then by beating the shit out of her
71	. [[spoiler:He jumps back by defending Bernie against Nicky]].
72	* LampshadeHanging: Of course Bernie and Natalie get their happy ending thanks to a random ass drunk driver, and Bernie points out that "It's just luck! It's freaky, freaky luck!".
73	* LikeFatherLikeSon: Bernie's son Mikey also has the misfortune of [[spoiler: pissing Shelly off and having his kneecap shattered due to gambling]].
74	* MaleFrontalNudity: Subverted. We see both Bernie and Natalie lying on the bed complimenting each other about the sex they just had, but when the camera moves downward, Natalie has her hands on his penis.
75	* MeaningfulBackgroundEvent: As Bernie pulls into a convenience store parking lot, the car's reflection shows the store's sign "EZ Market" with the last two letters burned out, reading "EZ Mark". We later learn that Natalie was paid by Shelly to be with Bernie.
76	* MeaningfulName: Bernie Lootz, who spent his life as a shitty, degenerate gambler who could never win, finally walks away with all the Lootz.
77	* {{Metaphorgotten}}: Shelly lets off a long one to rant about the new-style entertainment casinos as opposed to the old-school gambling dens.
78	-->'''Shelly:''' You mean that Disneyland mook-fest out there? Huh? C'mon, you know what that is? [[VerbalTic Huh?]] That's a fucking ''violation'' is what that is. It's something that used to be beautiful. Used to have class, like a gorgeous, high-priced hooker with an exclusive clientele. Then along comes that Steve Wincock sucker and knocks her up and puts her in a fucking family way. Now she's nothing but a cheap, fat [[{{Joisey}} whooah]] hiding behind too much fucking make-up. I look at her, I see all her stretch marks, it makes me wanna cry. But I remember the way she used to be. Am I right?
79	* MundaneFantastic: In an otherwise realistic setting, Bernie's luck (good or bad) is simply magical.
80	* ObviouslyEvil: In case the "pregnant woman faking going into labor and tripping over crap" con in the diner wasn't enough of a clue, Mikey and his girlfriend up the ante when they return. She's smoking and tipping the ashes into one of Bernie's plants, then goes into the bathroom to do coke. Meanwhile Mikey assumes Natalie's a hooker and tries to buy her services with a chip.
81	* OhCrap:
82	** Ironically, Bernie wonders what the fuck is going on when he starts to ''win'' at blackjack.
83	** The waitress who pours Bernie's coffee and always apologizes when they're out of cream is delighted when they finally have cream for him... but recognizes what's gone wrong when they're out of cream again.
84	* OnlySaneMan: Larry, despite being a young profit-driven douchebag, never makes a wrong argument. The Shangri-La ''should'' be turned into an entertainment venue, New Vegas Style. Shelly ''shouldn't'' drag a cheater up to his office and offer him [[AnArmAndALeg An Arm or a Leg]] but instead be handed over to the cops. Vegas is, and has always been, the worst of humanity, but he's arguing for the newer, more legal, more efficient HumansAreTheRealMonsters.
85	* PapaWolf: Even though Mikey's a {{jerkass}} who scammed Bernie, Bernie goes the distance for him after Mikey and Charlene try to cheat at the Shangri-La. Even after he learns that Mikey lied to him and Charlene isn't pregnant, he doubles down.
86	* ParentalIssues: Bernie runs into his son Mikey at a diner (Mikey and his girlfriend are trying to pull a trip and fall then sue someone con, but Bernie's there, so, no). Mikey's mom is a strung out junkie and Mikey wants nothing to do with Bernie.
87	* PetTheDog: Shelly has his moments. He's caught between two worlds. He first pets the dog when he admits to Bernie that he gave Buddy the heroin necessary for him to die, because Buddy was part of the old world and would just keep scraping along, never taking the buyout and retiring.
88	* ThePowerOfLove: Love is so powerful it can convince a broken woman to believe in goodness and hope for a future she thought she'd lost. It's so powerful it can turn a man BornUnlucky into a man BornLucky. It can convince a {{Jerkass}} to reveal he's a JerkWithAHeartOfGold. It can change the world, if only for a few people who deserve it.
89	* RageBreakingPoint: Bernie loves Shelly. Shelly's been his only friend for decades. When he learns Shelly paid Natalie to seduce him to get him to stay in Vegas? Whatever, that's business. But the fact that Shelly hit her? Bernie walks into the casino, punches Shelly in the gut...
90	-->'''Bernie:''' If you ever hurt her again, I'll kill you!
91	* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Bernie spells out to Shelly the message the movie has been sending him. That his dream of a Vegas that means something? It's all bullshit. Shelly's lost in the middle of the desert, chasing a mirage.
92	* RecordNeedleScratch: Trying to be cool and classy, Bernie puts on a record, then bumps into the record player.
93	* RedemptionEqualsDeath: [[spoiler: Shelly]], after [[spoiler: his]] HeelFaceTurn, is shortly whacked by Nicky Fingers.
94	* TheReveal: The third act opens with Shelly confronting Natalie about the fact that he paid her to seduce Bernie to keep the man in Vegas.
95	* RomanticFakeRealTurn: Natalie starts out seducing Bernie because she was paid to, but ultimately falls in love with him for real. [[spoiler:They get their happy ending.]]
96	* RuleOfSymbolism:
97	** BornUnlucky Bernie knocks over a shaker of salt (an ill omen) during his argument with Natalie about leaving Vegas in the second act.
98	** Bernie's only lucky when Natalie's nearby. Otherwise, he's still a cooler.
99	* TrappedByGamblingDebts: The reason why Bernie Lootz works for the casino as a "Cooler" is because he owes the casino over a hundred thousand dollars in gambling debts.
100	** Natalie's luck is as shitty as Bernie's. Together... they have a future.
101	* ShownTheirWork: When Bernie finally steps up to the table, he steps up to the craps table. Of all the games in the casino, that's the one where you're most likely to win if you play perfectly. You can almost break even with a perfect game. A degenerate gambler like Bernie would know this.
102	* UndyingLoyalty: Until the last act, Bernie is utterly loyal to Shelly. He's ''grateful'' to his only friend, his childhood friend, for breaking his kneecap, as it got him out of gambling and into a steady, if shitty, job. He can even forgive that Shelly paid Natalie to seduce him.
103	* WhiteDwarfStarlet: Buddy is an aging singer with a serious heroin habit. Shelly's trying to keep him on the edge of FunctionalAddict...

Context Film / TheCooler