Hard Eight

Hard Eight follows John, a man who has lost all his money in Reno. A passerby named Sydney offers him breakfast and then teaches him how to make a living at the casino tables. Under Sydney's guidance, John becomes a skilled professional gambler and the two travel together, prospering from his play. The arrangement is disrupted when John falls for Clementine, a waitress who supports herself partly through sex work, and when Jimmy, a volatile acquaintance of John's, comes into the picture. Sydney's reasons for taking John under his wing stay unclear, and the relationship between the two men grows strained as John's romantic life and his friendship with Jimmy pull him in other directions.

The film is Paul Thomas Anderson's debut feature, which he also wrote. It is the third of the fifteen films he has directed in chronological order, positioned between Boogie Nights and Magnolia. Philip Baker Hall plays Sydney, with John C. Reilly as John, Gwyneth Paltrow as Clementine and Samuel L. Jackson as Jimmy. Philip Seymour Hoffman appears as a young craps player. Shot for about 3 million dollars, it earned a modest following rather than wide commercial success. On IMDb it holds a 7.1 rating from roughly 60,000 votes, and on TMDB a 6.8 from about a thousand votes. The critics' rating stands at 6.8 from 89 reviews, broadly consistent with the audience scores.