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I don’t think there’s a single movie from Paul Thomas Anderson that I haven’t enjoyed or admired in some way. Granted, Hard Eight is a bit more formulaic than the more mysterious The Master or freewheeling Boogie Nights, but it does the crime story very well. The piece that makes the entire film work and operates at a higher level is the lead performance of Philip Baker Hall as an enigmatic Las Vegas gangster. Hall ensures that even some of the more awkward performances (I’m looking at you Paltrow) or routine story beats eventually find their footing. If no other reason, Hall’s performance is more than enough to warrant a viewing of Hard Eight.
Hard Eight is a fairly intimate story about a not too bright man, John (John C. Reilly), who gets stranded in Las Vegas. Sydney (Hall) finds him, takes pity upon him, and teaches him a few card counting tricks in order to grift large sums of money from the casinos. Flash forward a few years; John is now Sydney’s partner, but their friendship gets tested once a dim-bulb waitress (Gwyneth Paltrow) who moonlights as a hooker gets them involved in a heap of trouble. Throw in Samuel L. Jackson as a lurking threat to the trio’s precarious friendships and safety, and you’ve got a bang up crime thriller. And for the most part, it wildly succeeds.
Reilly is believable as a half-bright loser drifting across Nevada looking for a sense of purpose and a father figure. There’s a certain empathy that Reilly brings to his roles, a likeability that makes us want to root for him to get his head straight and stop making dumb choices. And Jackson can play a man who goes from friendly to menacing in his sleep. It’s really only Paltrow who slightly falters. On the surface level, she does a fine job. But Paltrow isn’t very believable as a low-class girl lacking in street smarts, her features are too elegant, her eyes project an intelligence that belies the character’s motivations. But she does do a great job playing against her good girl image here, even if the effort doesn’t add up to a completely realized performance.
Yet it’s Hall that keeps you entranced throughout. Hard Eight doesn’t have the sweeping ambition to create filmic monuments to towering egos and watch them fall, instead it wants to quietly observe a sad, compelling man go about fixing a messy situation. And Hall nails every single moment and facet of his character. It’s great to see a long-working character actor like him be given a chance to shine in the spotlight. When Hard Eight zeroes in Hall’s work and ignores trying to craft a conventional plot (which is really unnecessary as the film has crafted interesting characters saying great dialog), it plays out like a melancholic torch ballad, one that we could easily imagine Sydney listening to while smoking his cigarettes and sipping his drinks, thinking about the mistakes of the past, and wondering if there’s any way he can atone. Anderson is a great observer of human behavior, and here’s where his legend begins.
