The Movie: Imagine a man who is so unlucky in life that just standing next to him can cause your own luck to go sour. Well that would describe the protagonist of The Cooler, who is hired by a Vegas casino as a "cooler" -- whenever one of their high rollers is running too hot, the cooler steps in and changes their luck! Things are all great, until the Cooler (played brilliantly by William H. Macy) meets a beautiful young woman (Maria Bello) and falls in love with her... and she actually falls in love with him too. Suddenly, his luck changes, and he actually makes the people around him win... not exactly a good thing for his job security!

Alec Baldwin was nominated for an Oscar in his supporting role as the superstitious, old-school Vegas boss who runs this fictitious old-school downtown Vegas casino. Heck, you'd have to be superstitious to want to actually pay money for a "cooler"... which actually brings up some conflict between him and some of his casino staff who are trying to bring the "Shangri La" casino into the modern age.

I actually liked this movie quite a bit (but heck, I'll watch anything if it's set in Vegas), but I must warn you that most people find this movie to not be what you expect, in that most people expect it to be a cutesy love story or even some kind of comedy, but let me assure you, it is neither of those things. This is a movie set in an old school Vegas casino and all of it's old school Vegas ways, including all of the unsavory bits that come with that. In other words, this movie features quite a bit more violence and gratuitous sex (including some shots of William H. Macy's ass) than a lot of people expect.

But overall, I found it to be a satisfying story, though I am not exactly sure why Alec Baldwin was nominated in this role, especially since I think William H. Macy's performance was so much stronger. Maybe the competition wasn't so stiff in the supporting actor category. Who knows.

The DVD: Though the anamorphic transfer on this DVD exhibited some softness and a bit more film grain than I've come to expect from modern 2.35:1 films on DVD, the color was bright and bold, and there weren't any compression artifacts to be found anywhere.

Audio proved to be just OK, with not exactly pristine sound, but not poor sound either. The surround channels were used mostly for just ambient sound effects, something to be expected from a dialog-heavy movie such as this.

Special features include a couple of commentary tracks, a Sundance Channel featurette, and a neat little comparison between the storyboards and the actual film.