HARD EIGHT (1996) Gamboling in Vegas

In HARD EIGHT, everything is hard: the characters, the dialogue, the circumstances, and the string of violence that leads to an old hood's atonement. A black-suited man (Philip Baker Hall) walks into a diner and commits a seemingly random act of benevolence for a down-and-out young man (John C. Reilly) that starts with offering him a cigarette and cup of coffee, evolves into teaching him how to win a lot in Vegas and then how to improve his lot in life in general. Later, we learn what once happened that binds the two men. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, this film is about mentoring, love, casino life and sweet revenge. Watch for a brief but absolutely unforgettable cameo by Philip Seymour Hoffman (another of Anderson's regulars) as a loud-mouthed high roller. (Trivia note: Philip Baker Hall played the trench-coated, humorously fascistic library cop Bookman in a Seinfeld episode, and a fictionally suicidal Richard Nixon in Robert Altman's riveting one-man film SECRET HONOR (1985).