The sharp-eyed reader of Simple Tricks will no doubt notice that today’s entry isn’t what I promised was coming. What can I say? I’m easily distracted…

Have no fear. That discussion of my all-time favorite films is still on the way, hopefully by the end of the week. For today, however, I’d like to offer up my thoughts on The Cooler, an independent film currently running at Salt Lake’s Broadway Theater.

William H. Macy is quite simply amazing, one of the best (and busiest) actors currently working in Hollywood, but I suspect that the average moviegoer probably doesn’t know his name. He’s the sort of actor that makes most people say, “Oh, I know him, he’s that one guy, you know, that was in that one show with Tom Cruise…”

Partly that’s because he’s so damn good at making everyone else in a picture look good; partly it’s because he usually plays secondary roles. But I think the major reason he has gone unrecognized for so long is because his typical role is the sort of guy who blends into the woodwork. With his nice but not outstanding features and his penchant for playing soft-spoken, sad-hearted Everymen, Macy doesn’t exactly exude charisma. He’s more like the guy in the office that no one ever notices until the day you hear that he’s died in a car accident, and then everyone feels really terrible because he always seemed so nice. Here’s hoping that his starring role in The Cooler will bring him some much deserved name-branding.

Macy plays Bernie, another character in Macy’s long repetoire of losers and sad sacks, a guy with such rotten luck that he can actually taint other people’s fortunes. Bernie is employed by a Las Vegas casino to “cool off” other people’s hot streaks. Just having Bernie stand next to you at the table is enough to make you throw craps or draw a crappy hand. He’s the best in the business, but being the best at being the worst takes its toll on a man’s soul. This is a guy for whom the cards went cold a long time ago. And yet, he’s not a total loss, despite what he himself may believe. There is a hint of mischief in his eyes, a sparkle when he sees a cocktail waitress named Natalie, and a kind of quiet nobility in the way he tries to help her out in her daily dealings with drunken louts. It is this deeper, immensely likable quality that draws Natalie — and the viewer — toward Bernie for the next two hours of screentime.

The Cooler is a subtle character study that is in many ways a throwback to the gritty dramas of the 1970s. It is perhaps best represented by the scene in which Bernie and Natalie make love for the first time. Bernie is awkward and scared, unable to believe that he’s actually experiencing anything that could be considered good luck, even as he is, in fact, getting lucky. The scene is heartwarming, heartbreaking, funny, sad, erotic, triumphant, and very, very truthful, all at the same time, a description that could apply to the entire film.

The movie pivots around the idea of luck and the capricious way, for those who really believe in it, that luck comes and goes. Like Samson losing his strength to Delilah, Bernie’s abilities as a cooler are ruined by his tryst with Natalie, and that’s something his boss Shelly cannot tolerate. Shelly’s actions to try and restore Bernie’s usefulness to him drive the action to an unlikely but entirely appropriate conclusion.

In addition to Macy’s outstanding performance, Alec Baldwin also shines as Shelly, an “old school” casino owner who laments the “Disneyland mook fest” that Steve Winn’s super resorts have brought to the Strip and who tends to solve things the old-fashioned way: with a lead pipe. A lesser actor would have played Shelly as a cartoon, a bad DeNiro impression, but Baldwin — whose career as a leading man flamed out ten years ago but who has recently been reborn as a much more interesting (and beefy) character actor — provides him with some nuance and makes him surprisingly sympathetic. Maria Bello is also very good as Natalie, a woman who isn’t quite everything she appears to be (she is, however, very sexy in a refreshingly normal, non-movie-star kind of way), and old pro Paul Sorvino puts in a brief but welcome cameo as a lounge singer who tries to tell Shelly something about lions and challenges.

All in all, this is the sort of film that we don’t see often enough these days: a well-crafted, entertaining movie made for grown-ups. The Cooler is, in fact, very much like the Las Vegas that Shelly is desperately trying to preserve: classy, R-rated entertainment that is untainted by the need to cater to the family crowd. It is a completely satisfying cinema experience.