Hard Eight (film)

Hard Eight is a 1996 American crime thriller film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson in his feature directorial debut. The film stars Philip Baker Hall, John C. Reilly, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Samuel L. Jackson, with brief appearances by Robert Ridgely, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Melora Walters.

Plot
Sydney, a gambler in his 60s, finds a young man, John, sitting forlornly outside a diner, on the road to Las Vegas, and offers to give him a cigarette and buys him a cup of coffee. John reluctantly accepts. Asking probing questions, Sydney learns that John has lost all his money while gambling in Las Vegas in a futile attempt to win $6,000 to pay for his mother's funeral. Sydney offers to drive John to Las Vegas and show him how to get a free room for the night, as well as a free dinner. Though skeptical, John agrees to go. In Vegas, Sydney advances $150 to John and teaches him how to comp hustle the casino, by posing as a compulsive gambler with lots of money to blow. John gets his free room, dinner, and a pair of show tickets to boot. He is ecstatic, but Sydney points out that he has only solved his problem for the one night.

Two years later, in Reno, John has become Sydney's protégé, and a successful gambler. He has made enough to pay for his mother's funeral, and more. Sydney notes that John has become attracted to a casino cocktail waitress, named Clementine. John introduces Sydney to Jimmy, who does internal security work at the casino. Jimmy speaks disrespectfully of women, and Sydney takes an instant dislike to him.

Later, Sydney is waited on by Clementine. He asks her probing questions, much as he did when he first encountered John. Sydney learns that she moonlights as a prostitute. Sydney gives her a good tip, and leaves. It's near the end of Clementine's shift. Sydney does not go home, but waits outside until Clementine appears. Clementine accompanies Sydney to the apartment he shares with John. There, Clementine is surprised that Sydney does not want to sleep with her. Instead, he makes her comfortable in John's room. He says that John will sleep elsewhere tonight.

The next day, after reassuring an anxious John that he did not have sex with Clementine, Sydney sends the happy pair off to have a day of fun and shopping together.

That night, Sydney is wakened by a frantic phone call from John, who begs for his help, but will not tell Sydney what kind of help, or why it's needed. Sydney gets up, dresses, and drives to a motel. He finds John and Clementine in one of the rooms, with a bleeding, unconscious man handcuffed to the bed. John says the man is a "hostage." He has a client of Clementine's who refused to pay her the $300 owed. The tension is heightened because John and Clementine called the hostage's wife to demand the money of her. Apart from that, the pair have no other plan of how to terminate the situation.

John has a gun in his belt and Sydney tells John to hand it over. He opens the revolver and notes that it is not loaded.

Sydney tells them that the wife is not going to bring the money. She's probably already called the police and they're probably already on the way. Sydney says that they've got to get away, but Clementine will not budge. She's not going to leave without her money. She will not listen to reason and John will not leave without her. He reveals that they got married today. Sydney tries a new tack, asking Clementine if she loves John. She nods in agreement.

Sydney moves about the room, clearing it of fingerprints and other evidence, as he calms the pair, telling John and Clementine to get out of town--to head to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon. He will notify the casino of their elopement and that Clementine will return to her job after the honeymoon. The man in the bed starts to waken. Sydney hits him on the head with a hard object and the man blacks out again. He persuades Clementine to give him the handcuffs key, which he uses to free the man's hands.

Sydney, John, and Clementine leave the room and go to their cars. John and Clementine head for Niagara Falls, and Sydney for his apartment. En route, he drops the gun and handcuffs down a sewer. In the apartment he finds a threatening note from Jimmy, demanding that they meet.

At the meeting, Jimmy reveals that, years ago, he had worked security in Atlantic City. He knew, or heard something, about certain mob figures. Jimmy knows that Sydney was then a mobster. He had heard that Sydney killed John's father. Jimmy threatens to tell John that Sydney killed his father, unless Sydney gives him $10,000. Jimmy pulls a gun and threatens to blow Sydney away unless he pays the money instantly.

Sydney says he will get the money that night and give it to Jimmy, but it'll be $6,000, all that he has. After Sydney turns the money over to Jimmy, Jimmy dresses up and heads to a casino, where he plays craps winning a $2,000 bet on a Hard Eight.

Sydney breaks into Jimmy's rooms, searches, and finds Jimmy's cache of guns. He removes one, loads it, sits in a chair and waits. Near dawn, Jimmy arrives in a festive mood with a girl. As he starts to unzip his pants, he sees Sydney with the gun. Refusing to hesitate, Sydney shoots and kills Jimmy. Sydney orders the frantic girl out and she hurriedly escapes. Sydney finds what seems to be a larger sum of his money in Jimmy's pocket, and takes it.

Sydney goes home and packs. He receives a phone call from John. Sydney says he has something important to tell John. He tells him that he loves him. At the other end, John is visibly moved. He recovers his speech and says that he loves Sydney too. After the call, Sydney leaves Reno. He returns to the diner where he met John. There's a spot of blood on his shirt cuff. He pulls the jacket sleeve down to cover it up.

Cast

 * Philip Baker Hall as Sydney Brown
 * John C. Reilly as John Finnegan
 * Gwyneth Paltrow as Clementine
 * Samuel L. Jackson as Jimmy
 * Philip Seymour Hoffman as craps player
 * Robert Ridgely as keno manager
 * Melora Walters as Jimmy's girl
 * F. William Parker as the hostage

Development
The film, originally titled Sydney, was Anderson's first feature, and was expanded from the principal idea of Anderson's short film Cigarettes & Coffee (1993). Hard Eight was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. Hall, Reilly, Ridgely, and Walters have regularly appeared in the director's subsequent films, and the late Hoffman had a role in all but one released during his lifetime. Hard Eight's central character, Sydney, was inspired by the character of the same name (also played by Philip Baker Hall) in the 1988 film Midnight Run.

Release
Anderson has said he is working on a Blu-ray release of the film.

Reception
Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half stars out of four, writing "Movies like Hard Eight remind me of what original, compelling characters the movies can sometimes give us." Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote, "Hard Eight is not a movie that wants to make a grand statement. It is really little more than a small resonant mood piece whose hard-bitten characters are difficult to like. But within its self-imposed limitations, it accomplishes most of what it sets out to do. And the acting is wonderfully understated, economical and unsentimental."

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 83%, based on 36 reviews, with an average rating of 6.9/10.

Hard Eight has been described by some authors as a neo-noir film.