The Cooler
Bernie works at a Las Vegas casino, where he uses his innate ability to bring about misfortune in those around him to jinx gamblers into losing. His imposing boss, Shelly Kaplow, is happy with the arrangement. But Bernie finds unexpected happiness when he begins dating attractive waitress Natalie Belisario.
Movies Like The Cooler
Similar in style, tone, and themes — find your next watch.
Hard Eight
1997★ 6.8
A stranger mentors a young Reno gambler who weds a hooker and befriends a vulgar casino regular.
Leaving Las Vegas
1995★ 7.3
Ben Sanderson, an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter who lost everything because of his drinking, arrives in Las Vegas to drink himself to death. There, he meets and forms an uneasy friendship and non-interference pact with prostitute Sera.
Casino
1995★ 8.0
In Las Vegas, two best friends--a casino executive and a Mafia enforcer--compete for a gambling empire and a fast-living, fast-loving socialite.
Bugsy
1991★ 6.4
New York gangster Ben 'Bugsy' Siegel takes a brief business trip to Los Angeles. A sharp-dressing womanizer with a foul temper, Siegel doesn't hesitate to kill or maim anyone crossing him. In L.A. the life, the movies, and most of all strong-willed Virginia Hill detain him while his family wait back home. Then a trip to a run-down gambling joint at a spot in the desert known as Las Vegas gives him his big idea.
Rounders
1998★ 7.0
Poker addict Mike McDermott knows the game inside out, but loses his money one night in a game to Russian-American gangster Teddy KGB. Promising his partner Jo he'll give up, he meets up with best friend Lester 'Worm' Murphy, just out of prison and owing lots of money to the wrong kind of people. McDermott becomes his co-guarantor and now there's only one way to raise the money, the pair have to get back into the game.
Ballad of a Small Player
2025★ 5.8
Amid the glittering casinos of Macau, a gambler running from his past—and his debts—becomes fascinated by an enigmatic woman at the baccarat table.
Nightmare Alley
2021★ 6.9
An ambitious carnival man with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychologist who is even more dangerous than he is.
Sanctuary
2023★ 6.1
Confined to a claustrophobic hotel room, the heir to a hotel empire and the dominatrix who has primed him for success become locked in a battle of wits and wills as he tries to end his relationship with her.
On Swift Horses
2025★ 6.3
In the 1950s, a seemingly sensible newlywed and her wayward brother-in-law undertake parallel journeys of risk, romance, and self-discovery.
Molly's Game
2017★ 7.2
Molly Bloom, a young skier and former Olympic hopeful becomes a successful entrepreneur (and a target of an FBI investigation) when she establishes a high-stakes, international poker game.
The Card Counter
2021★ 6.1
William Tell just wants to play cards. His spartan existence on the casino trail is shattered when he is approached by Cirk, a vulnerable and angry young man seeking help to execute his plan for revenge on a military colonel. Tell sees a chance at redemption through his relationship with Cirk.
House of Games
1987★ 6.8
A psychiatrist comes to the aid of a compulsive gambler and is led by a smooth-talking grifter into the shadowy but compelling world of stings, scams, and con men.
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
2022★ 7.0
Nancy Stokes, a retired schoolteacher, is pretty sure she has never had good sex. Now that her husband has died, she is determined to take a tour of sexual vistas that until now she has only imagined. She even has a plan; it involves an anonymous hotel room, and a sex worker who calls himself Leo Grande.
Looking for Mr. Goodbar
1977★ 6.3
A short, unhappy affair with a married man leads a dedicated schoolteacher into the alcohol-and-drug fueled underworld of singles’ bars, where she begins to engage in a pattern of dangerous sexual activity.
The Gambler
1974★ 6.7
New York City English professor Axel Freed outwardly seems like an upstanding citizen. But privately Freed is in the clutches of a severe gambling addiction that threatens to destroy him.
13
2010★ 5.8
A naive young man assumes a dead man's identity and finds himself embroiled in an underground world of power, violence, and chance where men gamble behind closed doors on the lives of other men.
Training Day
2001★ 7.5
On his first day on the job as a narcotics officer, a rookie cop works with a rogue detective who isn't what he appears.
Winged Creatures
2009★ 5.9
A psychotic man opens fire in a diner, murdering numerous people before killing himself. The survivors struggle in different ways following this horrendous event: a doctor doubts his own instincts and elects to use an experimental medical procedure on his wife, while a gambler believes he's on a lucky streak. A waitress begins engaging in promiscuous sex, and a young girl whose father is among the dead gains unexpected fame.
Desert Hearts
1985★ 7.1
While waiting for her divorce papers, a repressed literature professor finds herself unexpectedly attracted by a carefree, spirited young woman named Cay.
A Bronx Tale
1993★ 7.9
Set in the Bronx during the tumultuous 1960s, an adolescent boy is torn between his honest, working-class father and a violent yet charismatic crime boss. Complicating matters is the youngster's growing attraction - forbidden in his neighborhood - for a beautiful black girl.