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Purification of the con or the con of purification, Fellini's Il Bidone as much as Rossen's The Hustler. "Fast" Eddie in his autumn is a trim smoothie, a liquor peddler with a toe still in the game, Paul Newman in canny control. The poolroom punk (Tom Cruise) might be him two and a half decades earlier, a preening grinner managed by his hard-edged squeeze (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). To bring the fool to wisdom is to awaken the mercenary within, "human moves" are what to watch along the way to the tournament in Atlantic City. "Maybe I'm hustling you, maybe I'm not. You don't know, but you should know. If you know that, you know when to say yes, when to say no. Everybody goes home in a Cadillac." Money earned versus money won, the search for grit amid glitz, Martin Scorsese in the commercial arena. The veteran talks business only to seek purity, the kid shows mercy and gets a bruised lip. Hyperactive flash replaces the original's reserved starkness, "checkers sells more than chess": Rhythm shifts, a whipping-circling-zooming camera, the delectation of form like a good whiff of bourbon. The billiards table is something for people to dance around, the flow of Warren Zevon and Eric Clapton and Muddy Waters makes sure to include a throb of "Va Pensiero." Stung by loss at the hands of a younger knave, the silvery pro cracks at last in a high angle that descends to Newman in downcast profile. "It takes a real gift to show your ass like that." Set in a converted auditorium shot by Scorsese to glow like a cathedral, the climactic championship is blasphemed by a backroom deal from the pupil who's learned too well. It ends with victory in defeat rather than defeat in victory, as befits an adjustment from the era of Beat screeds to the decade of Rocky sequels. "The balls roll funny for everybody, kiddo." Kingpin by the Farrelly Brothers is a valuable deflationary shaft. Cinematography by Michael Balhaus. With Helen Shaver, John Turturro, Bill Cobbs, and Forest Whitaker.
--- Fernando F. Croce |