Hard Eight | |
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![]() Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Paul Thomas Anderson |
Screenplay by | Paul Thomas Anderson |
Based on | Cigarettes & Coffee by Paul Thomas Anderson |
Produced by | Robert Jones John Lyons |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Robert Elswit |
Edited by | Barbara Tulliver |
Music by | Jon Brion Michael Penn |
Production company | |
Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 102 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $3 million |
Box office | $222,559 [1] |
Hard Eight (originally titled Sydney [2] ) is a 1996 American crime film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson in his feature directorial debut, and starring Philip Baker Hall, John C. Reilly, Gwyneth Paltrow and Samuel L. Jackson. It is the expansion of the short film Cigarettes & Coffee . The film follows the life of a senior gambler and a homeless man. It premiered at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. [3]
Sydney Brown, a well-dressed senior gambler, finds John Finnegan, a homeless man, forlornly sitting outside a diner in Sparks, Nevada. He offers him a cigarette and buys him a cup of coffee. John tells Sydney that he lost the money in Las Vegas and he needs $6,000 for his mother's funeral. They travel to Vegas, where Sydney helps John win the money. Two years later, John becomes Sydney's protégé. Sydney is calm and reserved, and displays a fatherly care for John, who is unsophisticated. John has a new friend named Jimmy, who does security work. John is attracted to Clementine, a cocktail waitress in Reno. Sydney meets Clementine, and learns that she moonlights as a prostitute. Although Clementine believes Sydney might want to use her services, he wants to build a connection between her and John. Sydney asks John to show Clementine around the town.
After receiving a frantic phone call, Sydney finds John and Clementine holding an unconscious tourist hostage in a nearby motel because he did not pay Clementine for sex. Sydney learns that John and Clementine have called the hostage's wife, threatening to kill him if they do not get the money. After finding Jimmy's gun, Sydney convinces John and Clementine to flee the motel, advising them to leave town for a honeymoon as they have recently been impulsively married. While leaving, Sydney removes the evidence from the motel room.
Sydney meets with Jimmy, who tells him that the couple did not call the police. However, Jimmy explains that he has heard stories of Sydney killing John's father in Atlantic City. Jimmy pulls a gun on Sydney and threatens to tell John unless Sydney gives him $10,000. Sydney says that he does not have it, but he can give $6,000 cash. They go to Jimmy's suite, and down to the casino floor, where Sydney gets the money from the cashier and gives it to Jimmy. John calls Sydney from a roadside phone to update him on their honeymoon trip. During the call, Sydney tells John that he loves him like a son. After hearing that, he thanks him and says that he also loves him. Sydney sneaks into Jimmy's house, kills him and retrieves the money. The next day, Sydney returns to the diner where he met John and covers his bloodstained shirt cuff with a jacket sleeve.
Some of Anderson's collaborative actors appear in the film, including Philip Seymour Hoffman as a craps player and Melora Walters as Jimmy's girlfriend.
Originally titled Sydney, it was Anderson's first feature film and the expansion of the short film Cigarettes & Coffee . [4] [5] The main character Sydney was named after Hall's previous role in Midnight Run . Hall, Walters, Reilly and Hoffman later starred in Boogie Nights and Magnolia .
Anderson said that he cast Hoffman in a supporting role after seeing him in Scent of a Woman . [6] According to Hall, Hoffman improvised most of the dialogue his character says in his only scene in the film. [7]
The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. [8] In 2018, Anderson said he was working on a Blu-ray release of the film. [9] An Australian Blu-ray was released by Viavision in October 2020 with two commentaries, a deleted scene and footage from the Sundance Institute Filmmaker Lab. [10]
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." [11] 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." [12] On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 82% based on 49 reviews, with an average rating of 6.9/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "An absorbing showcase for Philip Baker Hall, Paul Thomas Anderson's feature debut is a gamble that pays off handsomely." [13] It is described by some authors as a neo-noir film. [14]
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Paul Thomas Anderson, also known by his initials PTA, is an American filmmaker. His accolades include nominations for eleven Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and eight BAFTA Awards. He has also won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival, the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and both the Silver and Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.
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John Christopher Reilly is an American actor. He is known as a character actor taking leading and supporting roles in independent drama films and studio comedies. He gained exposure through his supporting roles in Paul Thomas Anderson's films Hard Eight (1996), Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999), and Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York (2002) and The Aviator (2004). Reilly was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the corresponding Golden Globe Award for his role in the musical film Chicago (2002). Reilly's other notable films include The River Wild (1994), The Thin Red Line (1998), and The Hours (2002).
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Cinephilia is the term used to refer to a passionate interest in films, film theory, and film criticism. The term is a portmanteau of the words cinema and philia, one of the four ancient Greek words for love. A person with a passionate interest in cinema is called a cinephile, cinemaphile, filmophile, or, informally, a film buff. To a cinephile, a film is often not just a source of entertainment as they see films from a more critical point of view.
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Paul Thomas Anderson is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. He has directed nine feature-length films, five short films, twenty three music videos, one documentary, one television episode as a guest segment director, and one theatrical play. He made his directorial debut with the mockumentary short film The Dirk Diggler Story (1988), at the age of 18, about a pornographic actor in the 1970s. Anderson followed it five years later with another short film, Cigarettes & Coffee (1993). Anderson wrote and directed the crime film Hard Eight (1996), starring Philip Baker Hall, John C. Reilly, Gwyneth Paltrow and Samuel L. Jackson. The film was well received. Using the basis of The Dirk Diggler Story, Anderson wrote and directed an expansion of the film, Boogie Nights (1997). It stars Mark Wahlberg as an actor in the Golden Age of Porn from the 1970s to the 1980s. The film received acclaim from critics and was a commercial success; at the 70th Academy Awards ceremony, the film was nominated for three Academy Awards, including for Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Screenplay.
Philip Seymour Hoffman (1967–2014) was an American actor, director, and producer who made his screen debut on the police procedural Law & Order in 1991. He made his film debut later in the same year by appearing in a minor role in Triple Bogey on a Par Five Hole. Hoffman followed this with supporting roles as a student in Scent of a Woman (1992), and a storm chaser in Twister (1996) before his breakthrough role as a gay boom operator in Paul Thomas Anderson's drama Boogie Nights (1997), for which he received critical acclaim. In the same year, he appeared in the Revolutionary War documentary series Liberty! (1997). Two years later, he played a kind nurse in Anderson's Magnolia and an arrogant playboy in The Talented Mr. Ripley, for which he received the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor. Hoffman made his Broadway debut the following year with his lead role in True West which garnered him a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.
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