Review of The Hustler (1961) by Ryan H — 29 Aug 2012

Darker and thicker than I expected, The Hustler has easily become my favorite in the sports film genre. Everyone in the cast is brilliant: Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, Piper Laurie, and George C. Scott.

It's funny, I don't think I would have ever put Piper Laurie as the same actress who played Catherine in Twin Peaks, one of the teachers in The Faculty, and Carrie's mom. She's a brilliant and criminally underrated actress.

The Hustler was ahead of its time with how dark and sexual the characters are, which is probably why West Side Story won for best picture that year. The story follows Fast Eddie, one of the best pool players in the world.

He wants to prove himself by playing the only person he thinks might be better than him: Minnesota Fats. Even though he plays the best game a person can play, he doesn't have the ability to know when to call it quits.

And like Bert says later on, this isn't football where even if you lose your yardage counts. What matters here is who walks home with the money in their pockets. Depressed after ultimately losing a 25 hour game, Eddie decides to go out for a drink.

There he meets Sarah Packard, a beautiful woman who seems to have something to hide. At first it's the fact that she's crippled. We always see her sitting down, but after she gets up to go back to her place Eddie tries to catch her, but she explains she has a limp because she's lame, not because she's drunk.

The first part of the second act of the film is basically the relationship between Eddie and Sarah. They hardly know each other, yet they live together and make love. Their secrets can wait. She doesn't know he's a hustler and he doesn't know why she chooses to be alone.

Once the midpoint comes and Eddie starts working with Bert we see where things could possibly go. Bert seems to be just a regular manager at first, but there's something more twisted about him. He wants to be the winner of everything.

He has the money, so that doesn't matter. If he can own the best pool shark in the world then he has something to show off. In preparing for making more money, Bert realizes that Eddie could get tied up in Sarah.

She tells him she loves him, but he's not ready to commit on that level yet. But that's a pretty huge leap for her. Sarah has that apartment because her father who has been absent since the age of 7 keeps giving her money, which helps pay the bills and put her through a couple of college classes.

She explains that all men in her life run away and she can never find closure. She's not ready to be hurt again. Bert can't see any other way but for Eddie to lose the girl who doesn't seem to be too fond of his hustling.

When they go to Louisville, Sarah gets upset and thinks that Eddie won't ever come back. Instead he invites her to come with them. While there, Bert knows how to get rid of her: if he can detest her enough that Eddie will have to make a choice then he knows Eddie will choose him.

But when that doesn't happen he takes the next step and has sex with her. This leads to her death; a brilliantly crafted scene when she goes to the bathroom and writes on the mirror "Perverted Twisted Crippled.

" When Eddie comes back he sees her dead body on the bathroom floor, and we see the razor blade and blood in the sink without the camera ever focusing on it. She can't get anyone's love and the depression that she tried to drink away finally overcame her.

This scene was so tragic and sad, when I thought if there was going to be a death in the film that it was going to feel out of place. Not here. Of course with this being a sports film, Eddie goes back and finally beats Fats, but the brilliance here is that we never linger on the game.

There's not excitement in "is he going to win or not?!" We know he wins because now, after all this time, he knows when to quit. He doesn't give Bert the money and walks away from hustling forever.

He should have learned to quit before Sarah died. His issues of needing to quit extended far beyond the game of pool itself. Eddie just needed to tell Sarah he loved her and stopped playing his foolish games.

The Hustler doesn't really have anything about it that I can complain about. It was honestly one of the best films I've ever seen.