The Shitter is more like it.

But let’s go back a bit: a good film about gambling or casino culture can go a long way toward mitigating even the most mediocre filmmaking. 1973’s The Sting, Newman and Redford’s follow-up to Butch Cassidy is little more than lightweight fun. Scorcese’s Casino, whilst among the filmmaker’s worst films–a sloppy, 3-hour version of Goodfellas in a casino, as it were–is almost saved by Don Rickles and some coke-fueled Vegas “insider” bits that give you the impression the filmmakers know how casinos are really run. And Rounders, fired by a nifty Edward Norton performance, is leagues better than John Malkovitch’s Russian accent would have you believe.

Trust me when I say, though, that The Cooler is wholly and entirely unsavable - worse than even Kevin Worrall said in his Stylus review a few months back and not worth a rental, much less the $8.50 price of admission. Listen, I’m as big a fan of William H. Macy as the next would-be indie film snob - not only does nobody play the sad clown like him, but as he’s shown in films such as David Mamet’s Oleanna, he’s also capable of tremendous swagger and even a palpable sense of danger. And when it comes to malice (the trait, not the movie), Alec Baldwin can snarl with the best of them, if given the right role (such as that Glengarry Glenn Ross walk-on).

But honestly nothing can prepare you for the wretched, painfully bad filmmaking of this movie. First off, Macy is utterly, pathetically typecast as Bernie Lootz here - that dog has never hung quite like it does here. Bernie’s a Loser, you see - a bigger loser than Macy’s brace-getting, game-show-kid-grown-up Magnolia loser, a bigger loser than his mulletted, porn-filming, wife-humiliated Little Bill in Boogie Nights loser, even a bigger loser than his Really Lame Dad losers in Jurassic Park III and Pleasantville. Such a loser that his job in The Cooler is to bring his loser qualities to gamblers in the casino, in the hopes that his crap-ass luck will rub off on them and save the house some cash.

Baldwin, nominated for his turn as the Old Fashioned Tough Guy Who Runs the Casino, is altogether less impressive here than you’ve been told. Sure, his Shelly is Mean - he cripples people, beats up girls and so forth. But he’s also Dignified - he clings to old Vegas because the new, “Disneyland” Vegas sickens him. And (spoiler alert) he shows Compassion, mercy-killing old drug addicted lounge singers, before cradling them in his arms and, in his words, “weeping like a baby” he loves them so much. That’s this movie’s idea of a well-rounded character.

Still, all of this could be forgivable in the right film, as hamfisted and predictable as some of it may seem; cliches, after all, do exist for a reason. But in the hands of director and co-writer Wayne Kramer, the film’s an embarrassing parody of these cliches. To begin with, its sense of pacing seems inspired by the attention span of a four year-old that’s been held back a grade. For instance, when the film begins, Bernie’s a complete wash-out. Then he gets laid, and two minutes later, his matted-down hair is poofy and parted differently. He’s up, he walks with a swagger and his luck is a-changing! Then, Shelly tells Bernie’s girl to get out of town because his casino’s losing money with all that good luck. Next scene, he’s down again - a loser. Two minutes after that, the girl comes back and Bernie’s hair is even poofier! He’s up! And so on — that’s the kind of pacing here. And this is to say nothing of Paul Sorvino’s smack-addled singer, who’s dead so fast, you wonder why he bothered taking the role.

Then there’s the whole “this-is-how-it-works-in-casinos” inside-baseball factor. Which sucks. For instance, Bernie calls suckers in casino-talk “Easy Marks” — rich people who let on that they have fat wallets, for instance. And of course, a few scenes later you see Bernie pulling into a parking space, with a reflection in the foreground of a neon sign that reads: “EZ-Market” with the “e-t” flickering on and off. The most subtle thing about the scene is that the neon sign is upside down.

The whole notion of a cooler–that is, someone who is paid to cool off hot gamblers–should be engaging…but it’s played so badly, it becomes laughable within a half hour. First off, Bernie seems less a cooler than an X-File his luck is so ludicrously contagious. When Bernie’s down, you half expect gamblers to start decomposing on the spot everything goes so badly. The opposite, of course, is true of when Bernie’s in his post-coitus luck stage — at that point, every person in the casino wins at the same time. It’s literally, that not believable. You start to wonder Shelly goes to such lengths to keep Bernie from leaving-maiming, punching women, etc. — if he just got rid of his ass, maybe the casino wouldn’t go broke inside of ten minutes.

I could go on, but I won’t. Suffice it to say, The Cooler drags down every actor in the bunch. No wonder IMDB has a reader post that says: “This is honestly the worst movie I have ever seen.” It pretty much is.