The Hustler (1961)

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  Barneyonmovies

  7 / 10

  WHAT I LIKED: Like so many great sports films, Robert Rossen's 'The Hustler,' isn't about the game; it merely uses the game as a vehicle to explore one obsessive player. Here we follow pool hustler Eddie (Paul Newman), and in the first half of the film his destructive tendencies drive him to defeat and he wallows endlessly in self-pity and doubt. This is brought to life utterly perfectly from the opening moments where Rossen and Newman together capture Eddie's cocky arrogance and obsessive hunger for winning the hustle in a match with Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason). The script does little of the work; most of the talking is done by the camera capturing Newman's utterly perfect facial expressions and his unbelievable command of the screen that tells us everything about the character that we need to know. Once his obsession drives him into the ground and he loses, he finds himself wounded, scavenging any attachment he can from the dusky, black and white streets of New York which are drenched in Kenyon Hopkins' slow Jazz.
  
  Around halfway through, manipulative pool manager Bert Gordon (an early performance from George C. Scott) points out the problems with his character and proposes a deal to get him back in the game, and after a fight with his newfound lover Sarah (Piper Laurie) and a good beating in a bar, Eddie begins to understand that he needs to embrace his reality to achieve his dreams. He smartens up and loses the cocky attitude, and eventually goes on to win against Fats. It's the kind of redemption arc where the character faces his own demons that you'd expect to some extent, but the way the final act plays out actually leads Eddie to make one final realisation - that his obsession with winning the hustle is the truly destructive thing. The costs of his final 'victory' were too high, and in the end he's contempt to walk away from the game after confronting that very fact. That's a big arc for a lost and destructive character to make, and in many ways it's a rewarding thing to watch, particularly when the execution is so perfect.
  
  WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: The fact that Eddie makes that realisation at the end certainly doesn't mean the audience will... as they'll have understood it from the very first few moments. From our perspective, it's a case of watching a character catch on to something that we've known all along, and that can make it feel rather like going through the motions at times.
  
  VERDICT: Robert Rossen's 'The Hustler,' is a superbly-executed character piece about a destructive man slowly realising his obvious flaws and understanding what it really means to win.

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