“You humble yourself!” A review of and essay on Hard Eight (1996)

If you have not seen Hard Eight, I'd recommend not reading too far

P.T. Anderson is not a filmmaker to be watched casually. That was my mistake the first two times I viewed Hard Eight, but this time I was focusing on every nuance, every edit, every slight change in the way Philip Baker Hall looked at someone. A commonly overlooked film (not surprising considering the bombast of Anderson’s two follow-ups) Hard Eight unfairly gets excluded when considering great motion picture debuts of the last quarter of the 20th century. Hard Eight doesn’t have the noticeable technical prowess of the Coens’ Blood Simple or the urgency and profane ground-breaking of Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs – it has a leisurely pace which most first-time filmmakers are too impatient to indulge. I guess what it comes down to is the real star attraction of Blood Simple and Reservoir Dogs are the directors themselves, in their eagerness to display their audacious style innovations. The story seems relatively secondary to the presentation of the story.

This is where Hard Eight messed up its chances of getting attention – P.T. Anderson seems much more invested in communicating his devotion to the mysteries of Philip Baker Hall than to what pop music he is going to play over Philip Baker Hall or whether he can shoot Philip Baker Hall from an elevated angle through a revolving ceiling fan. That is not to say there are not flourishes of this sort (there is a long tracking shot following Philip Baker Hall as he twists and weaves past craps tables and patrons in a casino) but they are not underlined and apparent upon first, or even second viewing. You’d have to be blind not to notice all the impressive effects the Coens are able to employ throughout the course of their own debut, the prodigious Blood Simple. While Anderson may not have had the capabilities to achieve the technical advancements of Blood Simple (few debuts, if any, can match it in that department) it compensates with a precocious understanding of human relationships, the psychological give-and-take in social dynamics: the natural way a cocky hustler, Jimmy (Samuel L. Jackson) can become resentful and envious of the poise he sees in the much older Sydney (Hall), the way a pliable cocktail waitress, Clementine (Gwyneth Paltrow) can immediately feel shame just being in the presence of the dignified older man, the way a sleazy-minded John (John C. Reilly) can sit next to Sydney, and suddenly he is mentally disciplining himself to be a gentleman. Sydney walks past dice-throwers shamelessly hooting and hollering and they get irritated that he isn’t acting like a jackass along with them. One particularly curious scene finds Sydney staring down an obnoxious craps player (Philip Seymour Hoffman, in his one scene in the film), who belligerently urges Sydney to “…have fun old-timer!!” It seems all of Vegas resents Sydney for his sober, chaste restrained nature. He is an unwanted moral compass, and the funny thing is he isn’t trying to be. At all. That’s just how he is.


The sad thing is Hoffman’s jocular hostility provokes Sydney into rashly betting against him, “$2000 on the hard eight” and you’re sure the cackling slob will be beaten by Sydney, but no, the cackling slob wins and when Sydney walks away from the table, defeated, without a word, he is even able to calm this most irrevocable of jackasses into a moment’s thoughtful regret.

This obsession with Sydney is what earns so much admiration from me for P.T. Anderson: he is not a type or a chess piece like the Colored Misters in Reservoir Dogs or the cheating wife/easily manipulated dim hero/scumbag cuckold/ sleazy hit man of Blood Simple. He is layers upon layers, endlessly worthy of study, complex, a contradictory enigma. All the other primary characters, Clementine, John, and Jimmy are defined by how they react to him, and what his presence inspires them to do.

The film opens ominously with the credits accompanied by funeral bells and what sounds like the thumps of a dark piston. One of the few things I take exception with in Hard Eight is the use of this music and sounds to open the film. This sets a misleading tone of doom for a film that is not about death or loss, but atonement and rescue, and this foreboding music is entirely inappropriate for thematic purposes. When the same music is played later in the film, it fits, because we hear it over the image of Gwyneth Paltrow’s cocktail waitress numbly adjusting her cleavage and her wardrobe while sitting on a bed Sydney has allowed her to use for the night in the spacious hotel suite he shares with John. She has incorrectly assumed Sydney expects a reward for his hospitality and not without reason, as altruism is mostly extinct in Las Vegas. This music alerts us to a death of a different kind as we see the glazed look in Clementine’s eyes as she adjusts her top to reveal more flesh. As we learn from her, this is routine behavior and she is not above turning tricks in addition to her job as a cocktail waitress, which requires she wear a titillating outfit, and flirt for tips. Previously, when she served Sydney a drink, he tells her she doesn’t have to do that with him. She is frank when he reappears in the extra bedroom with a robe, “…do you wanna fuck me?” Instead he softly reprimands her and explains that has nothing to do with it, “This is a comfortable bed for you. I want you to sleep on it…to give you something…a place to have a nice shower and a bed.” Instead of fucking her, he takes her to a diner for coffee and some food.


As for John C. Reilly’s character, we are introduced to him in Act 1 of the film, when he is hunched in defeat outside a café, and in desperate need of $6,000. In the compelling opening moments, Sydney introduces himself to the young man and asks him if he wants a cup of coffee and a cigarette. After convincing John that his intentions are harmless, they have a chat in the café, both men shown in close-up. John C. Reilly is as thin as you’re likely to see him, almost handsome, and Philip Baker Hall’s face, is, as already discussed, magnetizing, especially if it’s your first time watching the film, in which case you’re really not sure what he’s up to, and why he’s going out of his way to help this lost young man. Could he be up to something evil? This man, Sydney, seems like he could be capable of doing or being anything.


As the film progresses, the relationship between Sydney and John grows into a close bond, until Sydney is a father figure to John, and John like a son to Sydney. Things are only further complicated when John befriends the lowlife Jimmy and John and Clementine find themselves in a rather contrived situation involving a john who has been beaten unconscious, handcuffed, and held hostage by John, after being called for assistance by Clem when the man refused to pay her. John, in distress, calls Sydney to come to the hotel room where the two of them are hiding out with the unconscious man.


Clem is volatile and adamant about collecting her money to the point of hysteria. Even Sydney is unsure what to do and when Clem mutters sullenly, “You don’t have to help us,” he snaps at her, “I sure as hell don’t.” Then Clementine shrieks in defiance, “Then WHY DON’T YOU JUST GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!” Sydney, stunned, loses his cool for the first time in the film, “Clemetine. You got yourself in this situation. I did not get you here. So you humble yourself, you understand. You humble yourself!” To hear Sydney erupt, ever so briefly, like that, shook me and for the rest of the film, I was silently recovering from the shock of it.

Eventually, this tense hotel room dilemma is settled when Sydney finally persuades Clementine to unlock the handcuffs and for the three of them to simply leave, which they do, in the second masterful tracking shot of the film, as they exit the hotel room and, the camera angled up, they descend the motel stairs down into the camera, the high rises beyond the motel roof rising up behind them. Sydney convinces them to go away for a while, tells them to go to Niagara Falls. Once again Sydney has proven his adeptness at retrieving the people he cares about from near catastrophe.


As I said before, Sydney’s benevolent nature can remind one of a guardian angel, and while some may be waiting, upon first viewing, for the other shoe to drop, and for Sydney to reveal his sinister ulterior motives, they will be disappointed, when his ulterior motives finally are revealed, that they are far from sinister. First we learn from Jimmy, Sydney used to be a gangster type, a hood, a killer, not morally upright as misinterpreted, who murdered John’s father many years ago in Atlantic City. “I know some things about Atlantic City” threatens Jimmy, who then blackmails Sydney for $10,000 to prevent him from passing on this crucial information to John.


How Jimmy learns this information is not important, as Jimmy’s motivations for blackmailing Sydney further explore the way Sydney profoundly affects other people merely by being around. Jimmy doesn’t like being the second most composed cat in Vegas, and he certainly doesn’t like being thought little of by the first, so we get to see Samuel L. Jackson unleash another fine performance as the conflicted, reptilian Jimmy. Jackson is able to seem cocky and insecure with the same facial expression, and when he talks to Sydney, he is flustered, not cool, and it is very troubling for a character played by Samuel L. Jackson to feel not cool, especially when it is a short old man making him feel that way. Sydney gives him the money, after Jimmy pulls a gun on him and explains what it is about Sydney that irks him so much, and Sydney asks him to give his word that after the $10,000 has been given, Jimmy will consider the matter closed. Jimmy agrees, but Sydney is not stupid, and knowing Jimmy to be unprincipled and doubtful that he’ll keep his word, Sydney does what must be done.

Later that night, he waits for Jimmy to leave his house, then breaks in, finds a suitcase containing Jimmy’s guns, sets up a chair facing the front door, and sits, gun in hand, and simply waits. We see Jimmy acting wild at the craps table, laughing it up, winning the hard eight. Sydney sits and waits. Jimmy leaves with a woman. Sydney waits. Jimmy, busy undressing and groping the woman, “Let me see that pussy, baby” is startled to find Sydney aiming a gun at him. He shoots Jimmy dead.


Sydney goes to the café where he first found John hunched up sitting by the door, and sits at a booth and orders coffee. He looks at the white cuff of his shirt under his black coat. It is slightly smeared with blood. He covers the smeared cuff with his coat’s black sleeve.

There is one more shot after that, of Sydney looking at his coat sleeve, probably contemplating the significance of what he just did. I think the last shot should have been the cuff being covered and then a cut to the credits. After my first viewing of Hard Eight, that shot stayed with me, years later, after the rest of the film had faded from memory. I think it symbolizes a lot of things concerning Sydney’s motivations, his personality, his life. Just in case God’s not keeping track of him, Sydney has been taking care of his own penance, and I think what we all have to decide at the end is, does Sydney deserve to have that cuff covered up? I think the story of Hard Eight provides sufficient evidence that he has earned his absolution.

Grade: A-


Coming Soon: A review of P.T. Anderson's second picture, Boogie Nights (1997)