Delayed Reaction: Hard Eight

Premise: A professional gambler takes a young man under his wing.

 

I'm not sure if I'm a Paul Thomas Anderson fan. I've now seen all of his narrative feature films*. I've even seen a few of them multiple times. I respect that he's one of those filmmakers who almost demands a second viewing of any of his movies (once to watch the movie you think it will be, then again to appreciate the movie it actually is). I think I only outright love one of his movies: Punch-Drunk Love. Others, like Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood are very watchable. And I do want to revisit Inherent Vice and Phantom Thread, because I think ‘like’ could turn into ‘love’ in time. PTA isn't someone I get excited for though the way I do with the Coen Brothers, Chris Nolan, or Spielberg. I think I just like that there's someone out there making Paul Thomas Anderson movies. No one else makes films quite like his. 

 

*He has dozens of shorts, music videos, and a documentary (Junun) that I'm not tracking down.

 

Hard Eight is his debut film, from all the way back in 1996. That small window in time where Philip Baker Hall could be the lead of a movie, John C. Reilly and Gwyneth Paltrow were still young guns, Samuel L. Jackson would actually play a character and not a version of himself, and Philip Seymour Hoffman could do a single scene as an unnamed craps player. It was a simpler time. It's remarkable seeing the cast the PTA could assemble even this early in his career. I like when a filmmaker has "his guys" who he keeps coming back to. It's fun seeing those early films with Reilly or tracking Hoffman's rise from unnamed character in 1996 to Oscar nominee in 2012 (The Master).

 

This really feels like PTA's first movie. It's shorter than virtually all of his other movies: by a lot in some cases. The scope is pretty limited. The cinematography isn't fancy the way his later films became. Everything at about 5% more worn than they would be later on. Like, instead of having a costuming department with dozens of choices, the clothes feel more "pulled out of a closet". I don't mean any of this as a bad thing necessarily. It's just stuff you notice in early films for anyone. It's part of the appeal: seeing what they do when they still have limitations (budgetary, creative, casting).

 

I preferred the first half of the movie to the second. I liked living in Philip Baker Hall's life in Las Vegas; trying to understand his code and his motivations. He doesn't like much in life, but he does seem to find purpose in helping these broken people like Reilly and Paltrow. As soon as he gets the call about the botched hostage attempt, I lost interest. It felt like plot was invading this world that I liked. Like someone finally told PTA that the movie has to be about something. Just navigating the secret about Hall and Reilly's father would've been enough to keep me going. Samuel L. Jackson was an unnecessary nuisance.

 

For better and worse, this is the one PTA movie I don't need to see twice to appreciate what it's doing. As a debut film, it's a hell of an effort. He's definitely a filmmaker who benefits from the freedom his success gives him later on. Some directors thrive with limitations. PTA pushes up against them noticeably, so the result is a movie that's pretty good, but constantly feels like it wants to explode into something bigger.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend