Focus FeaturesIMDb’s “World War II Movies: The Ultimate List” offers impressive breadth across its 179 films, yet it still only represents a vanishing fraction of the thousands of WWII movies that have been made. The moral quagmire that was Vietnam inspired a good hundred or so notable movies, and even Korea, supposedly America’s forgotten war, gave us a steady stream of dramas in the 1950s and ‘60s, to say nothing of the cultural institution that was M*A*S*H. But the Iraq War has produced a minuscule number of movies in the 23 years since it began, and few, except for the factually dubious Hurt Locker and morally dubious American Sniper, have had any sort of cultural impact. Who turned out for Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk?Fittingly, Iraq bubbles beneath the surface of The Card Counter, only sometimes on the mind of some of its characters. The war had been over for a decade by the time Paul Schrader’s thriller hit theaters five years ago, and if it weren’t for the main character being a veteran, there would be no sign it had happened at all.William Tillich (Oscar Isaac) travels from casino to casino, winning blackjack games but never making enough money to draw attention to his tactics. He picked up card counting while serving eight years in military prison for his role in the Abu Ghraib scandal, and when he retires to his cheap motels, he strips the walls bare and covers the decor in sheets. There, in the recreated confines of his cell, he journals his thoughts on morality, punishment, and redemption, echoing the many Paul Schrader characters who came before him.Tillich’s strict regimen is interrupted by La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), who wants to add him to a stable of professional poker players, and Cirk (Tye Sheridan), who wants to add him to his plot to torture and kill Tillich’s old superior. Major John Gordo (Willem Dafoe) is enjoying a lucrative post-Abu Ghraib life in private security, while Cirk’s father went to prison for his role in the affair, then turned to drugs and domestic abuse before killing himself. Tillich uses the first opportunity to stave off the second, taking Cirk on the road while trying to disabuse him of any notion that there’s glory in revenge.The number one sign you’re watching a Paul Schrader movie. | Focus FeaturesWalk into a bar, turn on a basketball game, or even get the right set of commercials while streaming Frasier, and you’ll be encouraged to gamble your money at an alarming rate, which makes it notable that The Card Counter frames gambling as a form of control. Reducing cards to mathematics removes human whims and desires from the game, and Isaac inverts his blockbuster charm into an icy mask. In fact, other than one obnoxious poker player with a patriotic gimmick, no one in The Card Counter seems to either enjoy winning money or care about losing it. When La Linda asks Tillich what he does for fun, he doesn’t appear to understand the question.The connection between Abu Ghraib and poker is initially discordant, but then you realize that, for Tillich, casinos are just more venues for recreating the routine and exile of prison life so that he doesn’t lose himself in freedom like Cirk’s father. Generations of Bond films and Ocean’s 11-style capers have made gambling look glitzy and glamorous, but most casinos are really ill-lit conference centers for people who look like they’re still learning to dress themselves. Spend too much time inside, and anything outside can become a distant memory.That’s the appeal for Tillich, who’s haunted by chaotic nightmares of Abu Ghraib. We only get brief glimpses of his role in the infamous torture center, but there’s no moral vacuity about a good man gone bad or the chain of command failing the troops. Tillich willingly made poor decisions, and now he just has to live with them. A brutal but understated ending makes it clear that we rarely get Hollywood-style redemption or closure: life just continues, and hopefully, one day, the nightmares start to fade.Tillich tries to be something of a role model, but don’t expect a feel good roadtrip. | Focus FeaturesOne of our most relentless, religious, and absolutely infuriating creators (see Paul Schrader’s comments on women, AI, politics, basically anything that isn’t filmmaking, and often also filmmaking), Schrader’s late-career run has shown a remarkable tendency to tackle subject matter that polite society has shoved to the margins (2017’s First Reformed, praised for its frank look at the moral and spiritual dimensions of climate change, also touched on Iraq’s fallout). It’s difficult to watch Schrader’s protagonists grapple with the crushing weight of guilt while he staunchly refuses to take responsibility for sexual assault allegations, but it’s also not much a stretch to imagine that a man who once had a ruinous cocaine habit could get in the head of characters who realize there’s little they can do about their regrets.There will probably never be a great pantheon of Iraq War movies, at least in America — the conflict was too distant, too hollow, too misunderstood, and, despite all the bodies, too much of a sideshow to what followed. But The Card Counter understands its impact. It happened, and now it’s over. By and large, the people responsible for its atrocities got to walk away. And while those still bothered by it may not be scribbling away in journals, they’ve certainly realized that most people would prefer it if they kept their thoughts to themselves.The Card Counter is streaming on Prime Video.