Years before Paul Thomas Anderson asked Daniel Day Lewis to all but reprise his role from 'Gangs Of New York' in the Oscar winning 'There Will Be Blood', Paul managed to convince Adam Sandler to try his hand at serious acting in 'Punch Drunk Love', after all, he'd managed to pull off a similar trick way back when with Mark Whalberg in 'Boogie Nights' and somewhere in between those films, there was the small matter of a picture called 'Magnolia'. But before all this, PTA directed 'Hard 8' a.k.a. 'Sydney': a smooth, slow burn expansion of his short noir 'Coffee & Cigarettes'; the film had a high rate of attrition, pulled as it was from so many theatres after an in-house scuffle between distributor & director over length, title and structure. Anderson's stealth release in Cannes was a winner, and though the studios coerced concession on a title change; the powers that be, displeased with their young auteur, simply killed it on release. Thankfully, this made enough waves to secure Anderson's follow up; 'Boogie Nights' with 'New Line Cinema', the company he'd go onto work with for his next three pictures. 'Hard 8' sees an excellent Phillip Baker Hall as professional Reno based gambler Sydney; an enigmatic, twinkle eyed old-timer in a sharp suit who, in a seemingly random act of kindness, takes on a depressed, Casino-broke young protégée out to raise enough cash to bury his mother. Sydney shows this rough-hewn loser (played with dim witted aplomb by John C. Riley) the ropes, and pretty soon, these cagey low rollers are making a nice little earner in the city casinos. Things take a complex and potentially dangerous turn, when Riley falls for Gwyneth Paltrow's burnt-out-in-her-twenties cocktail waitress; instigating a series of events that draws the unwelcome attention of Samuel L. Jackson's sinister casino consultant. 'Hard 8' is an easy film to watch; well written with fine performances from a credible quartet: Hall & Riley (both of whom would go onto star in 'Boogie Nights' and 'Magnolia') are on fine form, up to speed with PTA's Altman-esque, conversational dialogue. Samuel L. Jackson makes his presence felt in a relatively short and somewhat unremarkable role whilst Paltrow puts in what'd be her second best performance of the decade. 'Hard 8' begins well but tends to lose momentum along the way, though it just has enough going for it to sustain its running time; PTA shows the promise he'd deliver in later films though there is a little thematically inappropriate Tarantino worship in some of the movie's unconvincing scenes of violence and conflict. Great performances, a good script and atmospheric cinematography make 'Hard 8' a.k.a. 'Sydney' worth seeing. A safe bet.