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This movie is about an amazingly unlucky guy named Bernie Lootz, played by William H. Macy, who works as a “Cooler” at a mob owned casino. The story is a fairly simple one; which employs a unique concept of a “Cooler,” who’s basically a jinx that can stop anyone’s winning streak by simply standing next to them. However Bernie’s luck changes when he falls in love with a cocktail waitress named Natalie, played by Maria Bello, which in hand starts making everyone win at the casino. This is a disaster for the mob boss/casino's manager Shelly Kaplow, played by Alec Baldwin, and he deals with the problem in his own sadistic way.

This movie has superb acting by all three of the leading roles. However, one cannot help feel that Macy has been typecast into the quirky/looser role since appearing in Fargo. It would be welcoming to see Macy try other roles instead of transposing the same character into different genres. As mentioned before, all of the leading characters are well rounded and well developed as we learn about their past and future plans and the movie progresses. Nevertheless, the secondary characters, like Shelly's thugs and the mob bosses, are a bit “cartoonish” and provide almost no additional ambiance to the movie.

The Cooler opens with a beautiful fly-by shot of a glittering Las Vegas at night with all its glory and grand casinos, and Bernie working his magic touch as gamblers loose their money left and right as he walks by. Conversely, the rest of the film is not that spectacular in terms of cinematography. In the movie, Shelly’s Shangri-La is emphasized as being the last mob-run casino in Las Vegas - that doesn’t cater to the “Disney tactics” of other casinos. However, we never see this concept on screen. Although almost the entire movie takes place at the Shangri-La Casino, we never get a sense of how this casino is different from any other casino.

While this movie gets high marks on having an original concept and superb acting, it fumbles the ball on execution. In his directorial debut, Wayne Kramer has made a failed attempt to combine a romantic love story with a dark mob thriller. While each element works well on its own, they do not go together. My other gripe is the extents of the sex scenes depicted in this movie. Believe me, I enjoy T&A as much as much the other guy, but there is a time and a place for it. Somehow we've been brainwashed by the media that every movie needs a racy sex scene with naked bodies rolling around. However, the extent of nudity in this movie seemed out of place and unnecessary. I was astonished to see William H. Macy, a respectable actor, shown totally nude except for a hand covering his crotch.