Hard Eight

Sydney (PTA’s preferred title for this, his first feature) is a debonair old school gambler, played by Philip Baker Hall — reprising a character he played as a supporting turn in the movie Midnight Run. He’s also the first of Paul Thomas Anderson’s ambiguous father figures, who seemingly at random takes a down on his luck homeless man (played by John C Reilly) under his wing, mentoring him in the art of craps, and looking out for him when he becomes involved with a Reno hostess, Clementine (Gwyneth Paltrow).

A neo-noir character piece set in motel rooms, cafes and casinos, Hard Eight now looks like Anderson’s most modest and unassuming film — it’s the kind of film you make when you are starting out and can’t command much money — but it was enough to get Film Comment magazine to nominate him the most promising young director of the year, and watching it now, it embodies much of what’s most valuable about Anderson’s movies: stripped of the flash and grandiosity, they’re all fundamentally about characters seeking connection, but most often forfeiting through their own flaws.

There turns out to be some kind of plot […] But the movie isn’t about a plot. It’s about these specific people in this place and time, and that’s why it’s so good: It listens and sees. It observes, and in that it takes its lead from Sydney, who is a student of human nature and plays the cards of life very, very close to his vest.

Roger Ebert

Beautifully controlled… This is a film in which every beat of dialogue, every camera angle and every note of slinky background lounge music has been calculated to create a mood of faintly sleazy cool.

Stephen Holden, New York Times