I came across this while searching online for The Hustlers. Even though it was written 53 years ago, I think it's still relevant.
http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9E06E0D7123BE13ABC4F51DFBF66838A679EDE
Movie Review
The Hustler (1961)
Review 1 -- No Title
By BOSLEY CROWTHER
Published: September 27, 1961
DAD always said stay out of poolrooms, and obviously he was right, to judge by what one sees in "The Hustler," which came to the Paramount and the Seventy-second Street Playhouse yesterday. For the characters one meets in the succession of sunless and smoky billiard halls (to use a more genteel term for them) that are tenanted in the course of this tough film are the sort to make your flesh creep and whatever blood you may have run cold.
Indeed, one character says in the beginning that a pool-room looks like a morgue and "those tables are the slabs they lay the stiffs on."
We're glad we took the good advice of Dad.
But this doesn't say the weird assembly of pool players, gamblers, hangers-on and hustlers—especially the hustlers—which they used to call "pool sharks" in our youth, are not fascinating and exciting to watch at a safe distance from the screen. They're high-strung, voracious and evil. They talk dirty, smoke, guzzle booze and befoul the dignity of human beings. At least, the hustlers' wicked betting managers do. They have a consuming greed for money that cancels out charity and love. They're full of energy and action.
That's the virtuous quality of this film.
Under Robert Rossen's strong direction, its ruthless and odorous account of one young hustler's eventual emancipation is positive and alive. It crackles with credible passions. It comes briskly and brusquely to sharp points. It doesn't dawdle with romantic nonsense, except in one brief unfortunate stretch.
Along about midway, after its hero has been washed out in a herculean game and has sneaked away into a cheap New York apartment with a fortuitously picked-up girl, it does mush about a bit with chitchat anent the deep yearnings of the heart and the needful direction a man takes to get onto solid ground.
But even in this mushy area, Mr. Rossen and Sidney Carroll have provided their characters with dialogue that keeps them buoyant and alive. And soon they are potently projected into the world of the realists again—into a brutally cynical connivance and a gorge-raising sweep to an ironic end.
There may not be much depth to the hero, whom Paul Newman violently plays with a master's control of tart expressions and bitterly passionate attitudes. Nor may there be quite enough clarity in the complicated nature of the girl, whom Piper Laurie wrings into a pathetic and eventually exhausted little rag. But they're both appealing people, he in a truculent, helpless way and she in the manner of a courageous, confused and uncompromising child.
The real power is packed into the character of an evil gambler, whom George C. Scott plays as though the devil himself had donned dark glasses and taken up residence in a rancid billiard hall. Mr. Scott is magnificently malefic. When he lifts those glasses and squints, it is as though somebody had suddenly put a knife between your ribs.
Jackie Gleason is also excellent—more so than you first realize—as a cool, self-collected pool expert who has gone into bondage to the gambling man. His deceptively casual behavior in that titanic initial game conceals a pathetic robot that you only later perceive.
Myron McCormick is touchingly futile as a tin-horn manager and Murray Hamilton, too, is effective in the brief role of a wealthy billiards buff. Michael Constantine, Carl York and Jale LaMotta are colorful as poolroom types.
"The Hustler" is not a picture to take the children to see, but it is one a father might wisely recommend to a restless teen-age son.
An appropriately nervous jazz score keeps the eardrums sharp.
The Cast
THE HUSTLER, screen play by Robert Rossen and Sidney Carroll; based on a novel by Walter Tevis; directed and produced by Mr. Rossen for Twentieth Century-Fox. At the Paramount, Seventh Avenue and Forty-third Street, and the Seventy-second Street Playhouse, 346 East Seventy-second Street. Running time: 133 minutes.
Eddie Felson . . . . . Paul Newman
Minnesota Fats . . . . . Jackie Gleason
Sarah Packard . . . . . Piper Laurie
Bert Gordon . . . . . George C. Scott
Charlie Burns . . . . . Myron McCormick
Findlay . . . . . Murray Hamilton
Big John . . . . . Michael Constantine
Preacher . . . . . Stefan Gierasch
Bartender . . . . . Jake LaMotta
Cashier . . . . . Gordon B. Clarke
Scorekeeper . . . . . Alexander Rose
Young Hustler . . . . . Carl York
http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9E06E0D7123BE13ABC4F51DFBF66838A679EDE
Movie Review
The Hustler (1961)
Review 1 -- No Title
By BOSLEY CROWTHER
Published: September 27, 1961
DAD always said stay out of poolrooms, and obviously he was right, to judge by what one sees in "The Hustler," which came to the Paramount and the Seventy-second Street Playhouse yesterday. For the characters one meets in the succession of sunless and smoky billiard halls (to use a more genteel term for them) that are tenanted in the course of this tough film are the sort to make your flesh creep and whatever blood you may have run cold.
Indeed, one character says in the beginning that a pool-room looks like a morgue and "those tables are the slabs they lay the stiffs on."
We're glad we took the good advice of Dad.
But this doesn't say the weird assembly of pool players, gamblers, hangers-on and hustlers—especially the hustlers—which they used to call "pool sharks" in our youth, are not fascinating and exciting to watch at a safe distance from the screen. They're high-strung, voracious and evil. They talk dirty, smoke, guzzle booze and befoul the dignity of human beings. At least, the hustlers' wicked betting managers do. They have a consuming greed for money that cancels out charity and love. They're full of energy and action.
That's the virtuous quality of this film.
Under Robert Rossen's strong direction, its ruthless and odorous account of one young hustler's eventual emancipation is positive and alive. It crackles with credible passions. It comes briskly and brusquely to sharp points. It doesn't dawdle with romantic nonsense, except in one brief unfortunate stretch.
Along about midway, after its hero has been washed out in a herculean game and has sneaked away into a cheap New York apartment with a fortuitously picked-up girl, it does mush about a bit with chitchat anent the deep yearnings of the heart and the needful direction a man takes to get onto solid ground.
But even in this mushy area, Mr. Rossen and Sidney Carroll have provided their characters with dialogue that keeps them buoyant and alive. And soon they are potently projected into the world of the realists again—into a brutally cynical connivance and a gorge-raising sweep to an ironic end.
There may not be much depth to the hero, whom Paul Newman violently plays with a master's control of tart expressions and bitterly passionate attitudes. Nor may there be quite enough clarity in the complicated nature of the girl, whom Piper Laurie wrings into a pathetic and eventually exhausted little rag. But they're both appealing people, he in a truculent, helpless way and she in the manner of a courageous, confused and uncompromising child.
The real power is packed into the character of an evil gambler, whom George C. Scott plays as though the devil himself had donned dark glasses and taken up residence in a rancid billiard hall. Mr. Scott is magnificently malefic. When he lifts those glasses and squints, it is as though somebody had suddenly put a knife between your ribs.
Jackie Gleason is also excellent—more so than you first realize—as a cool, self-collected pool expert who has gone into bondage to the gambling man. His deceptively casual behavior in that titanic initial game conceals a pathetic robot that you only later perceive.
Myron McCormick is touchingly futile as a tin-horn manager and Murray Hamilton, too, is effective in the brief role of a wealthy billiards buff. Michael Constantine, Carl York and Jale LaMotta are colorful as poolroom types.
"The Hustler" is not a picture to take the children to see, but it is one a father might wisely recommend to a restless teen-age son.
An appropriately nervous jazz score keeps the eardrums sharp.
The Cast
THE HUSTLER, screen play by Robert Rossen and Sidney Carroll; based on a novel by Walter Tevis; directed and produced by Mr. Rossen for Twentieth Century-Fox. At the Paramount, Seventh Avenue and Forty-third Street, and the Seventy-second Street Playhouse, 346 East Seventy-second Street. Running time: 133 minutes.
Eddie Felson . . . . . Paul Newman
Minnesota Fats . . . . . Jackie Gleason
Sarah Packard . . . . . Piper Laurie
Bert Gordon . . . . . George C. Scott
Charlie Burns . . . . . Myron McCormick
Findlay . . . . . Murray Hamilton
Big John . . . . . Michael Constantine
Preacher . . . . . Stefan Gierasch
Bartender . . . . . Jake LaMotta
Cashier . . . . . Gordon B. Clarke
Scorekeeper . . . . . Alexander Rose
Young Hustler . . . . . Carl York
