Ballad of a Small Player Review: A Gamble That Doesn’t Always Pay Off

Ballad of a Small Player is a 2025 British psychological thriller directed by Edward Berger and written by Rowan Joffé. Based on Lawrence Osborne’s 2014 novel The Ballad of a Small Player, the film stars Colin Farrell, with supporting turns from Fala Chen and Tilda Swinton.

With that pedigree, expectations run high, but the film doesn’t quite deliver on its promise.

The biggest issue here is ambition without focus. Ballad of a Small Player wants to be a psychological thriller, a character study, and a supernatural mystery all at once. Unfortunately, it never fully commits to any of these angles, leaving the whole endeavor feeling unfulfilled.

As a result, the film feels bloated and aimless. It’s like eating a piece of steak with too much fat—there’s substance somewhere in there, but you have to work too hard to find it. That said, the film isn’t exactly boring, which keeps it from being a total loss.

What Berger’s film does have going for it, however, is mood. There’s a vaguely spooky, ethereal quality that builds as the story progresses. This makes sense given the supernatural elements from Osborne’s source material, though the execution feels imperfect and incomplete.

In fact, the book’s eerie touches don’t translate to the screen with the same impact. Instead, viewers are left with a sense of something unfinished, like watching a painting that never got its final coat.

The overarching vibe, meanwhile, is one of persistent strangeness. You’re never quite sure what’s real or true, and that uncertainty dominates the entire two-hour runtime. Some elements remain just grounded enough to serve as anchors for the audience, but just barely.

This approach, though, wears thin over time, especially when everything else drifts into abstract territory. The ambiguity that initially intrigues eventually becomes exhausting, especially when paired with the film’s considerable length.

As a character-focused piece, the film places enormous responsibility on Colin Farrell’s shoulders. He plays “Lord” Freddy Doyle, a supposedly British gambling addict and swindler who’s actually a degenerate Irish con man under an assumed name. Farrell brings his usual intensity and commitment to the role, capturing the character’s desperation and self-destruction convincingly.

Even so, one wonders if the film asks too much of him. More importantly, it may ask too much of the audience. Bearing witness to Freddy’s slow unraveling becomes draining, especially when the narrative doesn’t seem to know where it’s headed.

A decent supporting turn from the game Fala Chen, alongside a glorified cameo featuring a frizzled Tilda Swinton, rounds out the cast but doesn’t amount to much. Their talents feel underutilized in a story so singularly focused on Farrell’s character.

Meanwhile, Joffé’s script lingers in scenes that could be tighter and dwells on moments that don’t advance the story. There’s a sense that we’re meant to feel confusion and disorientation here, even a bit of mystery, perhaps akin to Doyle’s own mood, but it just doesn’t quite work.

Furthermore, the supernatural aspects needed another draft. They create unease but feel integral to the narrative until it’s almost too late. This halfway approach leaves the film stuck between being a plausible character study and something more surreal, ultimately succeeding at neither.

In the end, Ballad of a Small Player isn’t a great film. It’s overstuffed when it should be lean, aimless when it should be focused, and ambiguous when in need of clarity.

That said, it has enough atmospheric strangeness and commitment from Farrell to avoid being a complete disaster.

Perhaps it’s worth taking a gamble on—but only if you’re feeling lucky and desperate enough to risk two hours of your life. For everyone else, the odds might not be in your favor.

 

 

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