AboveDeepBuggy Some things I liked some I did not.

Solidrariol Am I Missing Something?

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Bergorks If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

SnoopyStyle It's 1957. Indiana small town kid J.C. Cullen (Matt Dillon) wins the local craps games at the gas station. Hooker sets him up with Ferguson Edwards (Lee Grant) in Chicago. Mr. Edwards (Bruce Dern) is her blind partner. Sonny Binkley takes him around to play. He charms nice girl Aggie Donaldson (Suzy Amis) who has a past with Sonny. He goes to a private game at the Gem Club owned by George Cole (Tommy Lee Jones) where Cole's wife Lorry Dane (Diane Lane) dances. He breaks the bank angering Cole. The next night, Cole sets him up with loaded dice. Then gambler Phil Carpenter (Tom Skerritt) from California comes in.I've never been a fan of Matt Dillon coming in hard as a cocky young stud lead. He's too pigheaded to like. He's not as charming as he acts. He needs some vulnerability and more introspection. The production style is limited and the directing style is craps. There are some interesting actors but the story lacks sustained life. It has sections where the story is compelling. J.C.'s gambling with Cole over the two nights has good tension but it doesn't keep it going. It gets tied down with a messy story and an unlikeable Dillon. The movie could be good if it simplified to just them and Diane Lane. But I doubt it.

RNQ How do you rate a movie like this, which will never be great, but realizes tolerably, pretty well, a genre shuffle? The genre we might call neo-noir, but perhaps neo-B is better. There is the various filler--jazz, night alley with gleaming wet pavement, lots of bars, a fight club, street jammed with clubs, a elevated train that sparks when the guy and the girl kiss. And neo-filler--more than one woman doing a striptease with feathers and pasties and a bit of French stuff in bed. 1987 pretending to be the 1950s--mom with a little hat coming from church, shiny suits, homely red car. Someplace pretending to be "Chicago," da Big Town. A dice game a smart guy can pretty much always win, even when it's played in many scenes.And Matt Dillon who's really into it, skinny guy always focused, doing a fine job. A "kid" who can be older, Tintin in a strip club. But it ain't "Drugstore Cowboy."

pool2000 This is Matt Dillon's best performance by far. This shows why everyone thinks he has such talent. But like most of his other work, this movie is dark and realistic about human nature -- in a word, truthful. All the characters have at least two levels -- the superficial level, and a deeper level which is usually darker and more warped, yet never exaggerated. This film also features a masterful performance by Tommy Lee Jones, an excellent job by Suzy Amis, and Diane Lane's most sensational, most lurid, and deepest performance ever in her depiction of a scheming strip tease queen, the ultimate femme fatale, yet a tortured little girl underneath.The script is very good, very insightful, very restrained in its depiction of a lurid underworld of raw emotion. It dramatizes a world of sin and depravity, yet the story is at core a morality play in which decency and morality not only survive but thrive in spite of extreme temptations.A good movie on every level.

lib-4 This is one of those movies you find on the television in the wee hours of the morning. Matt Dillon does a credible job as a young man trying to break into big time gambling- craps not a skilled game like poker. Of course, he is torn between two women- one good and one rather conniving. Tommy Lee Jones plays a man who wants to break this young upstart. The action is lively and the side stories keep the movie going. The music from the 50's is a nice addition to the sound track.