Martin (John Amplas), a young man who looks around 20-years-old, boards a train in Indianapolis, Indiana for New York. At night, he breaks into a sleeping car and sedates a woman with a syringe full of narcotics. She struggles, but he tells her not to struggle or be upset because she wont feel pain. After a few minutes, the woman falls asleep, and Martin has sex with the unconscious woman. Afterwards, he slices her wrists with a razor blade so he can drink her blood. The woman bleeds to death in her sleep.
In the morning, the train stops in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Martin disembarks. He is met by Tata Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) an elderly and hostile old man who claims to be his cousin from the Old World. Together, they travel by another train to the town of Braddock, a dying industrial suburb. They walk to Cuda's large house where he shows Martin his living quarters. Cuda then accuses Martin of being an 84-year-old vampire from his old country. He has taken in Martin because he is family, but tells him, "First I will save your soul. Then I shall destroy you." Martin denies being a vampire and implies that Cuda is merely his uncle rather than his cousin. Cuda then puts up strings of garlic on the doors to his and his granddaughter's room, and then holds up a small cross when Martin approaches him. Martin takes away the cross, and even takes a bite of the garlic mocking these attempts by saying bitterly, "There's no real magic... ever". Cuda tells Martin that he can come and go as he pleases. But he also warns Martin that he will kill him if he kills anyone in Braddock. He also tells Martin to stay away from his granddaughter Christine (Christine Forrest), whom arrives home from her job that evening.
Cuda introduces Christine to Martin, but also warns her to stay away from him. But Christine instead strikes up a friendship with Martin who confides in her about his vampire heritage. When Cuda later confirms Martin's claims to be a vampire, Christine, not surprisingly, refuses to believe either one. She thinks that Cuda and the other members of her family have driven Martin to insanity by making him think that he is a vampire. It is never revealed if Martin really is a vampire, or just a shy and lonely youth with troubled issues. Christine is the only person that Martin gets the courage to talk to. When Christine's boyfriend Arthur (Tom Savini) arrives at the house for dinner, Martin stops talking and backs away despite Arthur's attempt at a conversation. Christine later confides in Martin that she hopes to leave Braddock someday with Arthur, even though Martin points out that Arthur treats her badly and is both verbally and physically abusive towards her.
When Christine sees that Martin won't talk to anyone else, she buys him a phone which he installs in his room. Martin begins to repeatingly call a radio talk show where he describes what it's like to be a vampire. He becomes known on the radio as "the Count" to all the listeners. But the patronizing host (Michael Gornick) thinks he's just crazy.
Martin gets a job at Cuda's grocery store of stocking shelves, hauling boxes around, and even gets to be a delivery boy for some of the customers. One of his customers is a certain Abby Santini (Elyane Nadeau), who becomes taken in with Martin. She is a very friendly young woman who is depressed when she tells Martin that her husband is unfaithful. But Martin still does not have the nerve to talk with her, so she is happy to have someone to confide in with her life problems. Martin phones the radio show host to describe his infatuation with the housewife and senses that she wants to have sex with him. When the radio show host asks Martin if it is a sexual problem that he has involving women criticizing him during sex, Martin replies that he has never had sex with a woman who was awake.
One day, Martin travels by train to outside Braddock to look for victims. At a supermarket, he follows a young woman (Sarah Venable) home to her posh suburban house. He sees the woman's husband (Richard Rubenstein) leave for a long business trip, and Martin decides this would be the right time for more feeding. Martin returns to the house after dark and breaks in through the garage door. But it is Martin who gets the surprise when he bursts into her bedroom to find her in bed with her adulterous lover Lewis (Al Levitsky). After a vicious struggle, Martin jabs both of them with hyprodermic needles with narcotics, and waits for the drugs to take affect. He drags the unconscious body of Lewis from the house to a clump of trees across the street where he kills him by shoving a broken tree branch into his neck and drinks his blood. Martin returns to the house where he has sex with the unconscious woman. But out of compassion and pity, he decides to let her live.
Martin begins to have romantic monochrome visions of his vampire past (real or imagined), where he drained blood from a young woman and was chased through the streets of a nameless European town by a torch-lit mob.
During one Sunday at church, Cuda brings home Father Howard (George A. Romero) who asks him about the possibility of exorcism and demon possession. Father Howard calls upon the elderly Father Zulemans (Clifford Forrest, Jr.) over at Cuda's request. Together, Cuda and Zulemans confront Martin his bedroom and attempt to perform an exorcism on him. At this point, Martin remembers (another real or imaginary flashback), in the Old Country of people trying to perform an exorcism on him, and he flees them. Martin then flees from Cuda and Zuelmas as well. A little later that night, Martin terrorizes Cuda in a children's playground when he puts on a Dracula cape and puts false fangs into his mouth to pretend that he really is a vampire.
One day, Martin finally musters the courage to talk with Mrs. Santini during a routine delivery to her house where he tells her that he's aware of her attempts to seduce him and wants now to have sex with her. After having sex for the first time, Mrs. Santini becomes more depressed for she tells Martin that her husband just left her because she discovered that she cannot bear children, and that her desires towards him are based on sex and nothing else. But Martin wants to stay with her and help her move on with her life. Martin tells the radio show host about his affair with the housewife and that he no longer has the urge to attack other women.
Meanwhile, Arthur meets with Cuda and tells him that he wants Christine to leave town with him so they can get married and start a family. But Christine becomes angry at Cuda when he tells Arthur that insanity runs in their family and he shouldn't consider having children with her. Shortly afterwards, Christine packs up and leaves Braddock for New York with Arthur despite Martin telling her that Arthur is abusive towards her. But her mind is made up. Before leaving, Christine tells Martin that she really has no ill feelings towards him and just wants to make a fresh start with her life. She says goodbye to him and promises to write. But Martin knows that with an abusive and possessive man in Christine's life, she probably won't.
Depressed over losing his one true friend, Martin phones the radio show host and tells him that he's getting "shaky" and wants to go out looking for more victims. That night, Martin travels to a rough crime-ridden area of Pittsburgh and attacks two derelicts in a alley, injecting them with narcotics. He kills one of them by silting the bum's wrist and drinking his blood. Martin is about to kill the second one when a police car shows up and gives chase. Martin narrowly escapes during a long chase on foot which leads from the garbage strew streets and through a local store. Martin runs into an old warehouse where a drug deal is going down. A shootout between the two cops and the three thugs begins where all of them are killed, leaving Martin as the sole survivor who casually walks away from the carnage.
One day, Martin finds Mrs. Santini dead in her bathtub, after she had slit her writs with a razor blade. Martin anonymously calls the police to report the body and leaves. He phones the radio show host one final time to say that he really doesn't need friends or people to talk to for he is his own person. But when Cuda learns about Mrs. Santini's suicide, is mistakenly thinks Martin killed her and made it look like a suicide as he's done before. Cuda walks into Martin's room while he is asleep and kills him by hammering a wooden stake through Martin's heart.
Cuda buries Martin's body in his back garden, while over the closing credits various voices from people are heard talking to the radio show host asking the whereabouts of "the Count".
算是蛮讽刺的故事。复仇和扑克毫无关系，但是也是人生无法像赌博一样算出几率
“I don’t play celebrity gambling,I play anonymous gambling”
为了Oscar daddy看的 朋友给我说才知道导演居然是出租车司机同一个
主角和男孩相互救赎的主线引出战争对人的迫害。立意很好，拍得不咋地，四不像。
质感出挑，单场戏很棒，整体却力有未逮，端着而无法下沉。倒是奥斯卡·伊萨克，头发一梳，从头有型到尾。
施拉德的救赎片，整体的框架源自他最推崇的《扒手》，一直到后来的《出租车司机》《美国舞男》再到这部，受过巨大创伤的边缘人，在现实生活与内心痛苦中挣扎，直到遇到可以拯救他内心的人，似乎找到了人生的方向，通过帮助对方，解救对方，同时完成对自己内心的救赎，最后释然，进入监狱，再与爱人隔着铁窗重逢，收获人世间最后爱情的美好，经典的剧本结构，每一幕都按计划进行。
说的是啥呢 148#2021年看104部电影
看完唱起那首歌：万万没想到，万万没想到啊~
看得要睡着了，没法聚焦。如果说出租车有着极强的隐喻和象征，那玩牌到底是在干嘛。。
四星半。與前一部《First Reformed》相似，關於一個男人的自我救贖。表現PTSD回憶的魚眼鏡頭很好；Oscar Isaac演技仍然細膩，演活這種孤獨、堅毅卻又脆弱的角色。
85/100 整部電影以牌局和復仇兩條簡單的線索同時推進，不過施拉德對兩者都進行了大篇幅的留白處理，我們既不明晰牌局的規則，也不清楚復仇的細節，更不知道用白床單籠罩整個房間的意義，換言之，我們是這部電影的旁觀者，只能遠遠地觀望，並非直接參與者。施拉德有意地簡化了過程（牌局的部分幾乎是符號化的），只向我們展示前因與後果，這種布列松式的抽離設計貫徹全片，給人的感覺如同男主的撲克臉那般沈著冷靜。男主無疑是在牌桌上振臂高呼的美利堅先生光鮮外表的反面，他的過往代表了美國最不堪入目的陰暗面，但真正有權勢的階層是無需上桌的，是隱身的，就像背後支持的金主與全身而退的上校，手上沾血的永遠不會是他們，抱屈含冤的永遠只會是我們，因此這也是一部關於剝削與被剝削者之間博弈的電影。
不愧是写出出租车司机这样经典character study的大师！自我救赎的焦灼作为他永恒的命题，放在今日，依旧不过时，尤其是那几个主观广角镜头，真的能把人看得如痴如醉。
施拉德男主都用同一个日记本吗…片尾盯着两只手几分钟…这招太难受了
赌牌是表，自我救赎是里，虐囚是因。日日背负良心谴责，却在一个叛逆废才青年身上找回内心深处的善良与正直。剧本很好，大部分时间电影都在铺垫和蓄势，叙述和表现手法非常克制，克制得近乎沉闷，但妙也妙在点到即止。气质上更接近文艺片。
好爱。监狱的广角镜头将人拖拽回无法自赎的罪孽中，火树银花下的牵手更显珍贵。施拉德营造出一种全程张力紧绷的危险氛围，一尘不染又屎尿血屁。由此，主角的动机更显直接，这是一种认命后不参杂质的单纯。再者，这是一部性感到极致的作品，我几度把它当作hardcore mental porn来欣赏了。Issac和谢里丹的对手戏，他俩那呼之欲出的性张力让我每分每秒都在心里大叫快搞！
2.5 救贖、孤獨、日記獨白、夜間流離的戲份都看得出 Taxi Driver 的影子，但Paul Schrader 始終不是 Martin Scorsese 啊
满满当当由内而外的一厢情愿的大男子主义令人窒息。电影像是为了一闪而过的灵感而拼凑出来的注满水的畸形产物，且那一丝灵感的表述十分粗暴浅显。有一些奇巧异化的景观（包括奥斯卡艾萨克的脸），吸引眼球，但意义不大。（肉眼可见的：绿衣骑士内核是基督最后诱惑，这部内核是在效颦出租车司机。所以，老马，花月杀手何时上映。
看得要睡着了，没法聚焦。如果说出租车有着极强的隐喻和象征，那玩牌到底是在干嘛。。
基调和质感很不错 犯罪惊悚这个类型并不少见 人物很立体矛盾很合理 但这些优点随着剧情的推进慢慢的不见了 故事开始变得夸张浮躁 甚至在赌场中的镜头和气氛也变得很诡异男女感情戏也是没有任何作用 又是浪费脚本演员的典范
3.5, 除了节奏慢点还行，有点马丁风格的醉乡民谣，poker场面没看够
Copyright © 2015-2023 All Rights Reserved
