Review

Mix the stacatto, tough-talk style of David Mamet and the existential forcefulness of Melville's Bob Le Flambeur and you get Hard Eight, a scruffy independent winner that will appeal to those who, well, like scruffy independent winners. Although set in Las Vegas and Reno, the film really takes place in a neon twilight zone where glitz and seediness meet. Reilly, a naive loser in desperate need of $6,000, gets a chance to change his luck when he meets Hall, a world-weary gambler who takes him under his wing and shows him how to turn meager earnings into thousands of dollars in freebies. After a few successful years, the mens' friendship changes when Reilly falls for Paltrow, a cocktail waitress who turns tricks on the side. Directed with icy precision by Anderson (Boogie Nights), Hard Eight is more concerned with atmosphere and characters than intricate plotting, though there's some surprising wrenches thrown into the story. On a more subtle level, he explores how people depend on and use each other. Hall turns in a mesmerizing career performance as the obsessively controlling gambler.