Movie Review: The Hustler (1961)

A grim drama about life and loss, The Hustler is extraordinarily bleak. The story of pool shark Eddie Felson discovering himself in a bottom-feeding world offers pessimism layered with hopelessness, Eddie consigned to finding empty victories only when people he cares about lose badly, in a net-zero game.

"Fast" Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) is an expert pool hustler, scouring scuzzy pool halls in small towns with his partner Charlie (Myron McCormick), duping other players out of small money. Determined to prove he is the best, Eddie arrives in the town of Ames to take on the legendary Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason), an undefeated master at pool. In a marathon 25 hour duel watched by expert gambler Bert Gordon (George C. Scott),  Eddie will experience highs and lows.

Bert: Eddie, you're a born loser.

Eddie shacks up with Sarah Packard (Piper Laurie), a lonely woman he picks up at the bus station. She walks with a limp and claims to be a "college student", but her behaviour suggests other pursuits. Regardless, she falls deeply in love with Eddie. Meanwhile, Bert offers to manage Eddie in return for a cut. With an eye on securing a rematch with Minnesota Fats, Eddie reluctantly agrees, but becoming a winner will come at a cost.

Eddie (to Bert): Maybe I'm not such a high-class piece of property right now. But that twenty-five percent slice of somethin' big is better than a hundred percent slice of nothin'.

The Hustler is a tragedy where victories are shallow and fleeting, and losses are devastating and leave permanent psychological scars. Four characters surround Eddie Felson, and his destiny is intertwined with theirs. Charlie is his small-time partner, satisfied with modest victories and often providing an ignored voice of reason. Minnesota Fats is the theoretical standard that Eddie measures himself against, an undefeated gentleman legend who has to be bested. Sarah is a potential soul mate, and Bert represents the win-at-all-costs dark side.

Paul Newman gives one of his career-defining performances as Eddie Felson, a man battling his inner demons just as much as his pool table opponents. Abrupt with Charlie, taking full advantage of Sarah, and using Bert to climb back out of the sewer, Eddie will eventually become aware of the human misery in his wake, but not before most of the damage is done.

George C. Scott, Piper Laurie, Jackie Gleason and Myron McCormick lend unforgettable support, while Murray Hamilton gets a small but effective role as the rich target of Eddie's first collaboration with Bert. Newman, Gleason, Scott and Laurie all received Academy Award acting nominations.

Filmed entirely in New York, and in austere black and white befitting the unforgiving world of desperate men gambling through a smoky haze, The Hustler is an enthralling classic. Director Robert Rossen also co-wrote the screenplay, and is most interested in the many different ways men find to spectacularly fail at life. Cocky, dismissive, cold-hearted, insulting, selfish, disingenuous and dishonest, Eddie will find all the different paths to misery, some on his own and others with Bert's help. By the time he achieves what he thought he was after, his life echoes within the vacuum of a deserted soul, and worst of all, he realizes it.

Eddie: Fat man, you shoot a great game of pool.
Minnesota Fats: So do you, Fast Eddie.

The Hustler charges to a spectacular Pyrrhic victory, a pool table psychologically surrounded by a clutch of victims, none of them able to applaud.



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Movie Review: Requiem For A Heavyweight (1962)

Once the final fight is lost, boxing lives still need to be lived. Requiem For A Heavyweight is a depressingly clear-eyed story of frequent defeat leading to abject despair.

Long past his glory years, aging boxer Louis "Mountain" Rivera (Anthony Quinn) is being pounded in the ring by a young Cassius Clay (as himself). After losing the lopsided fight, Rivera's boxing career is declared over: any more punches to his eye would cause permanent damage. Rivera takes the news hard, but it's even worse for his manger Maish (Jackie Gleason): he has mounting debts with loan sharks, and Rivera is his only meal ticket. More circumspect is corner man Army (Mickey Rooney), who sees the writing on the wall, but is equally loyal to Maish and Rivera and cannot break from either.

Rivera has no life skills to turn to, but employment office worker Grace Miller (Julie Harris) secures a job interview for Rivera to mentor children at a summer camp. The shrewd Maish has other plans: he needs to push Rivera into the crude world of professional wrestling to try and make enough money to pay off his debts. Rivera's fate hangs in the balance, but having no track record of good decision making, the odds are stacked against him.

Requiem For A Heavyweight is about life immediately after boxing delivers a knock-out punch. Other than the opening pummelling delivered by Cassius Clay, no action takes place in the ring. Instead, the Rod Serling story oozes pessimism. Once Rivera's fists are no longer adequate to provide him with a career, he has nothing else to fall back on: neither the intellect to avoid being duped into getting drunk ahead of his interview, nor the resolve to break free and cut links with his past. Although life opens a window of opportunity and provides a helping hand in the form of Grace, Rivera's slide towards being a freak show performer appears irreversible.

But deprived of everything else, Rivera does retain a deep sense of pride and self-awareness, and a realization that in the past, he had a shot. This will need to sustain the former contender into a future that promises only a downward spiral of increasing humiliation. Anthony Quinn brings Rivera to life in a strong and affecting performance. Director Ralph Nelson makes excellent use of black and white cinematography to portray the grim underbelly of the sport, a world of men uselessly dreaming of championships while living in near-squalor.

Nelson also animates the film with the sweaty presence of desperate characters like Maish and Army who live in boxing's filthy corners, trying to hitch a ride on the back of a dim boxer but neither talented enough to actually guide his career nor smart enough to avoid deep financial crises. Jackie Gleason and Mickey Rooney provide committed support in their uncompromising roles. Julie Harris as Grace is the shining beacon of light bravely cutting through the gloom of Rivera's darkening destiny. The salvation she offers is there for the taking, but Rivera may be heading away from it too fast to hold on.

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Movie Review: Smokey And The Bandit (1977)

With the real United States grappling with the 1973 oil embargo, high prices at the pump, and lower speed limits on the freeways, and with Detroit down-tuning the power out of previously muscular cars, Hollywood and television hatched a sub-genre of comic highway escapism: a fantasy world where there are no traffic jams, the road is empty, winding and just waiting to be driven at top speed, the hero has no worries about the price of gas, cars and trucks have unlimited power, complete amazing stunts, and are wrecked with wild abandon -- and no one gets hurt.

Gone In 60 Seconds (1974), Smokey And The Bandit plus all its sequels; Convoy (1978); The Blues Brothers (1980); The Cannonball Run (1981) and its sequel all followed the same formula, while on television, the The Dukes of Hazzard and B.J. and the Bear made sure that the car chases continued at home.

The movies made a lot of money and established Burt Reynolds as a star of mindless action fare. Smokey And The Bandit may have been among the better examples of the relatively short-lived trend, but that is definitely not saying much. Reynolds is the Bandit, a legendary driver hired to mastermind an illegal high speed beer run across state lines in the deep South. Bandit elects to pilot a black Pontiac Trans Am with gold trim, as a "blocking" car for the cargo truck to be driven by his friend Snowman (Jerry Reed), which means that Bandit attracts the police cars and distracts them from pulling over and inspecting the illegal cargo of the speeding truck behind him.

All seems to be going well until Bandit picks up the runaway bride Carrie (Sally Field). Unfortunately, her never-to-be father-in-law is the buffoonish Texas Sheriff  Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason), or Smokey as all police officers are called by truckers. The chase is on, with Smokey and his idiot son driving after the Bandit and Carrie for mile after endless mile, not caring about the illegal beer shipment, just wanting to rescue the family's honour from the disgrace brought upon them by Carrie, now nicknamed Frog by Bandit and his pals on CB Radio.

Smokey And The Bandit was directed by Hal Needham, who also helped to create the story. Needham was a former Hollywood stuntman, and all of Smokey And The Bandit is an excuse to engineer and execute a variety of car and truck stunts, including a famous leap by the Trans Am across a destroyed bridge. Pontiac donated the vehicles used for the movie, knowing full well that Trans Am sales would skyrocket if the movie was a success, which it was.

The movie is undoubtedly kinetic and entertaining, and the cinematography featuring photogenic vehicles carving up highways and dirt roads is hypnotically watchable. The real stars of the movie are the cars and trucks rather than humans: Reynolds barely acts, coasting through the movie with a series of bland expressions under his cowboy hat and behind his moustache. Gleason's Sheriff Justice is a spluttering comic book character on par with the sophistication of Elmer Fudd. Sally Field is the only acting bright spot in the movie, bringing to Frog a pleasantly spunky spark that survives the careening steel and squealing tires all around her.

The soundtrack of 1970s country and western music provides immediate reminders about the worst of both the decade and the genre, although the hit song Eastbound and Down, written and performed by Reed, has an undeniable charm to it.

Smokey And The Bandit has its foot on the floor and its brain on idle. As long as that combination is acceptable, entertainment is served.

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