Something went wrong
Try again later.
The Hustler
As The Hustler's 'Fast' Eddie Felson, Paul Newman created a classic antihero, charismatic but fundamentally flawed, and nobody's role model. A pool player from Oakland, CA, as good as anyone who ever picked up a cue, Eddie has an Achilles' heel: arrogance. It's not enough for him to win: he must force his opponent to acknowledge his superiority. The movie follows Eddie from his match against billiards champ Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason) as he falls in love with Sarah (Piper Laurie), an alcoholic would-be writer and sometime prostitute, and falls under the spell of Bert Gordon (George C. Scott), a successful gambler who offers to take Eddie under his wing and teach him how to play in the big time. However, when Sarah joins Eddie and Bert on a trip to Louisville for a high-stakes match with a dandy named Findlay (Murray Hamilton), the consequences prove tragic. Along with a classic performance by Newman, The Hustler also features turns by Scott, Laurie, and Gleason, in a rare dramatic role. Cameos from pool champ Willie Mosconi and boxer Jake LaMotta add to the atmosphere of Harry Horner's grubby production design and Eugen Schüfftan's camerawork. Director Robert Rossen, who had been working in films since 1937, was to direct only one more film, Lilith (1964), before his death in 1966. In 1986, Newman returned to the role of 'Fast' Eddie in Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money, for which he finally earned an Academy Award as Best Actor.
7 January 1920, Naples, Campania, Italy
24 March 1923, Washington, North Carolina, USA
18 October 1927, Wise, Virginia, USA
6 June 1926, Portsmouth, Ohio, USA
August 21, 1928 in Borger, Texas, USA
March 9, 1904 in USA
May 2, 1906 in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
29 April 1927, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA
23 March 1899, Chicago, Illinois, USA
13 November 1928, Windsor, Ontario, Canada
December 28, 2010
Like a traditional morality play; teens and up.
May 20, 2003
Under Robert Rossen's strong direction, its ruthless and odorous account of one young hustler's eventual emancipation is positive and alive.
March 21, 2007
The Hustler belongs to that school of screen realism that allows impressive performances but defeats the basic goal of pure entertainment.
April 11, 2011
A raft of excellent performances buoy a fervent tale of weakness and success.
June 20, 2011
So much more than the ups and downs of one pool player--It's shot in a very realistic way and deals with inner conflict and what it means to be a man.
September 24, 2013
A crackling good morality tale
January 27, 2016
Rosen, the co-author, has directed with a sure, economical hand. Newman is first-rate.
May 20, 2011
This is one of Newman's very best films, if not his best, even if it's relentlessly depressing.
August 03, 2008
Newman is better than usual; Gleason, as the slit-mouthed, beady-eyed Minnesota Fats, darts among the shabby little pool sharks like an improbably agile and natty whale; and Gambler Scott looks as though he could sell hot-air heat to the devil.
June 24, 2006
A wonderful hymn to the last true era when men of substance played pool with a vengeance.
September 25, 2018
Newman gives a restrained, modulated performance, an unusual one in that character development is sought and achieved with utilization only of voice, gesture, intensity.
January 13, 2017
Paul Newman is cocky poolroom hustler "Fast" Eddie Felson, a swaggering pool shark punk who works his trade in dingy bars and seedy poolrooms, in Robert Rossen's atmospheric adaptation of the Walter Tevis novel.