Clevercell Very disappointing...

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Justina The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

ollie1939-97-957994 As a directorial debut from one of America's finest living directors, Hard Eight is an excellent film that demonstrated Paul Thomas Anderson's skills as a filmmaker. With a simple plot focusing on Sydney (Phillip Baker Hall), an elderly gambler deciding to teach the tricks of the Las Vegas trade to the young and naive John (John C. Reilly). Whilst the film is known as the debut of its director, the movie is certainly the quietest and lowkey out of all his films. Like all of Anderson's films though, he certainly gets the very best out of his actors, particularly Phillip Baker Hall. He plays the role with a quiet and straight-laced intensity that almost seems like this is just one small story in Sydney's life. It's almost a shame that Hall didn't get as juicy of a role as this prior but it's good to see that he became a great character actor. Fantastic turns from both Reilly and Gwyneth Paltrow (the object of John's desires) make this an utterly compelling and interesting character study. To quote Stephen Holden, "it is not a movie that wants to an make a grand statement". It's a film about its characters, with less of the showy cinematic traits and themes that would mark some of Anderson's later films. It certainly lacks the depths and emotional intensity of his future films but as a small, simple thriller, it showed Anderson was already a talent to behold.

Gordon-11 This film tells the story of a professional gambler, who takes a broke young man under his wing. He teaches the young man how to win in casinos, but things take a turn when they meet a beautiful waitress called Clementine.Firstly, I am impressed by the actors and actresses who have become very big names subsequent to this film. Secondly, the story is intriguing and engaging. It doesn't feel like it's 90 minutes long! Clementine is adorable and​charming, and it's easy to see why John feel for her. The events at the end are unexpected, and makes the film exec more interesting. The most memorable thing for me though, is the professional gambler. His calm, controlled demeanour is contrary to what I expect from a professional gambler!

Chiefbukowski I like PT Andersons films. There Will be Blood, The Master and Punch Drunk Love especially, and I'm all on for character studies but this film was bad. No story, bad acting, bad dialogue, unrealistic characters, the whole shebang. It was his first film and it seems he lost creative control over it, but it shouldn't get a free ride just cos it's PT Anderson. It's bad. Maybe not 1star bad but I'm bringing down the average to even out the good 7, 8 and 9s from the fanboys who don't know better. Avoid. These next few lines are just to fill out the review and meet the 10 line minimum needed to get accepted as there is really nothing more to say about the film. Seriously.

jimbo-53-186511 Veteran gambler Sydney (Philip Baker Hall) stumbles across John (John C Reilly) sat outside a diner. The two men strike up a conversation and Sydney quickly learns that John has tried his hand at gambling in order to pay for his mother's funeral. Sydney offers to help John out and gives him a crash-course in how to hustle the casino out of a fortune. Although Sydney seems to be helping John out, is there more to what he's doing than meets the eye? This is Paul Thomas Anderson's debut picture (both as writer and director) and under normal circumstances I would normally go easy on a debutant's picture. Unfortunately, I've seen a few of PTA's films such as Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood and Punch Drunk Love and therefore I can't really be that charitable and sadly all of these films suffer the same problems as Hard Eight (albeit to varying degrees). Anyway let's try and evaluate this film.Well I have to admit that it started well and seemed to tell the tale of a young man called John who needed a bit of a direction in life. John then stumbles across Sydney who teaches him how to hustle the casino and teaches him a bit of self-respect and how to value himself as a person. OK so far so good, but what happens beyond this point is almost beyond a travesty....The film then skips by two years and we now find ourselves in Reno, Nevada. Sydney is in a casino there and John is in there too with his new friend Jimmy (Samuel L Jackson). It's clear from this point that we're lead to assume that Jimmy has lead John astray, but is this actually true? From this point on the film goes from telling an interesting story about John (a misguided individual) getting some direction in life (from Syndey) to a stupid story about his shotgun wedding to casino waitress and prostitute on the side Clementine (Gwyneth Paltrow)and them keeping a guy hostage because he didn't pay Clementine for sex - I get what Anderson was getting at here, but it's so badly handled that it becomes laughable.The film takes a turn for the worst when Jimmy and Sydney meet and we learn that Sydney killed John's father. I suspect Anderson intended this to be a plot twist that got the 'Wow' factor from the audience, but it's one that's so ludicrous and jars against the narrative so much that it's almost too ridiculous to believe. Yes it at least explains why Sydney wanted to bond with John at the start, but I felt a bit cheated when this was revealed. The story struggles more under scrutiny when you realise that Jimmy and Sydney were both in Atlantic City when Jimmy saw Sydney murder John's father, but then the two just happen to both meet a few years later 2,500 miles away from the crime scene with the son of the dead dad just happening to be there as well. I'm all for trying to suspend disbelief, but this was just too much.The ending is even worse when we see Jimmy get killed by the very guy that killed John's father; yes Jimmy was wrong to blackmail Sydney, but it's clear that Sydney was the worst of the two. This aspect of the film is even worse when you consider that Anderson offers no real commentary on anything that's happened and ends the film in a lazy way whereby you don't know whether or not Syndey gets away with his crimes. Even if this aspect of the plot didn't bother you the fact that Anderson didn't even bother to make Jimmy's assassination surprising or suspenseful just showed a real lack of care.The only positive I can take from this film is that it is very well-made. Anderson's direction is stylish and the performances from the likes of Baker-Hall, Jackson & Reilly were all good (the first two gave rather stock performances, but Reilly really excelled in giving his character a gawky nervous charm). I like the late Philip Seymour Hoffman as an actor, but he was actually really annoying in the 5 minutes or so that he was in this film. Ultimately, the big problem with Hard Eight is that it's really badly-written and whilst I got the feeling that Anderson was attempting to make this an insightful character study he doesn't give this film or his characters anywhere near the required depth to make these aspects work as well as they should do.