A P.T. Anderson Picture, it says right at the top. More precisely, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson's first picture, a contrived yet underplotted piece about a gentleman gambler (Philip Baker Hall, suit, tie, white shirt, tremendous air of authority) and his hapless protégé (John C. Reilly). It is not without ambitions, as manifest in the rhythmically monotonous, imitation-Mamet dialogue, and the flat, frontal, balanced compositions punctuated by the occasional Scorsese-esque tracking shot or Godardian table-top still life. For a movie shot in Reno, the color is inexcusably drab. With Gwyneth Paltrow, Samuel L. Jackson. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd
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