Atlantic City is a 1980 gambling-related movie directed by Louis Malle, A French Director. The Actors and Actresses are Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon, Robert Joy, Kate Reid, Michel Piccoli, Al Waxman and Hollis Mclaren.
Atlantic City has a magnetic storyline; it’s a part crime thriller, part fairy-tale and part love story set in the time when gambling became legal in Atlantic City. This gambling movie was nominated for five Academy Awards.
The Main Story
Atlantic City features Susan Sarandon and Burt Lancaster as the main characters in this bittersweet and reflective romantic movie. Sally Matthews (Susan Sarandon) leaves Canada and relocates to Atlantic City aspiring to have a thriving gambling industry career as a blackjack dealer. Her first problem is that she has her gangster husband on the trail with her sister, which he has impregnated. It appears no matter what she does; she cannot escape from trouble until she meets an ageing mobster (Burt Lancaster) who becomes her unlikely saviour.
When Lou (Burt Lancaster) gets involved with Sally, he finally finds a way to achieve the success he has always craved by selling cocaine for her estranged husband and places their lives in danger. However, as Lou sells the first batch of cocaine, Dave is killed by the mobsters he stole the drugs from.
The Ending
Lou continues to sell the remaining cocaine. Sally is fired from the casino when they discover her late husband had a criminal record. The mobsters track them down one night, t but Lou has a gun on him, and lands up shooting and killing them. Sally and Lou then steal the mobsters car and leave the city.
The following morning Sally leaves the motel, takes the car and half the remaining money and Lou watches her go.
He then moved back to Atlantic City and sold the remaining cocaine.
Hard Eight is a 1996 American Crime movie directed by Paul Anderson. The film’s main stars are Philip Baker Hall, John Reilly, Gwyneth Paltrow, Samuel L Jackson and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
The original title of the film was initially called “Sydney” the name of the main character.
An unsuccessful gambler is befriended by a professional conman who offers to teach him the tricks of the trade. He accepts – but a romance with a waitress threatens his new life.
The Main Story
Sydney, ( Phillip Hall ) is a hardened gambler who finds a miserable young man, John ( John Reilly ), sitting outside a diner in Vegas. He buys him coffee and learns that John needs $6,000 to pay for his mother’s funeral. He offers to teach John how to gamble.
John becomes Sydney’s protégé and is treated as a Son. John befriends a chap called Jimmy who is attracted to Clementine, a cocktail waitress and Part-time Prostitute.
Sydney meets Clementine and tries to connect John and Clementine who land up impulsively getting married. Soon after the marriage, Sydney receives a frantic phone call and goes to a motel where he finds John and Clementine holding a tourist hostage. The tourist was a client of Clementine who had sold herself to the tourist for sex. The tourist refused to pay, so John and Clementine beat him up and then phone Sydney.
Sydney tells them to go on their honeymoon while he removes the evidence from the motel room.
The tourist recovers and tracks Sydney down at the diner, shooting him three times before leaving to find John and Clementine.
The Ending
After the shooting, the audience assumes Sydney is dead, but it ends with the scene of him walking into the diner and covering a bloodstain with his shirt cuff.
Bugsy is a 1991 American biographical crime film based on the renowned mafia boss Bugsy Siegel and his real-life exploits in Las Vegas. It is based on a book written by Dean Jennings called We Only Kill Each Other. Bugsy was directed by Barry Levinson and nominated for numerous Academy Awards. It starts Warren Beaty as Siegel and Annette Benning as Virginia Hill.
The Main Story
In Bugsy one sees Malone move to Hollywood and become involved with movie star Virginia Hill. He gets a vision of developing a gambling haven in Las Vegas whilst gambling in the Nevada Desert. He receives a $1 million loan from his lifelong friend Lansky and some other New York mobsters as he reminds them that gambling is legal in Nevada.
Initially, Virginia wants no part of this scheme until he puts her in charge of accounting and starts building the Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel Casino in Las Vegas. The budget soon soars to $6 million due to Siegel’s extravagance. The grand opening of the Flamingo Casino is a complete failure with $2 million of the funding unaccounted, which Virginia had in fact stolen. Casino Grand Bay would’ve been a far better choice! I digress, Bugsy found out that Virginia had stolen the money, but, he keeps quiet about it and lets her keep it. However, on the same night of the opening, Bugsy is shot and killed in his home. Virginia receives the bad news and knows she has to return the stolen money.
The Ending
A week after Bugsy’s death, Virginia returns the stolen cash to Lansky and then commits suicide at her home in Austria. Here is the twist by 1991, The $6 million invested in Bugsy’s Las Vegas Casino generated $100 Billion in revenue. It just goes to show that some gambles pay off but is it worth a life?
