Atlantic City

REVIEW
In this fascinating, intelligent character study, director Malle captures the Atlantic City of the '80s, a city living with its faded past and a fragile optimism for the future. Lancaster, in what may be the performance of his career, brilliantly plays a small-time numbers runner with notions of grandeur who gets a chance at the big score when he crosses paths with casino employee Sarandon and her ex-husband and drug pusher Joy. The simplicity of the characters' lives and dreams belies the tumultuous events which follow when all are eventually tempted by the attainable usually just beyond their grasp. Reid is especially good as a former beauty contest winner living with the ghost of her gangster husband, and Sarandon, whose first great performance this was, demonstrates the eroticism of lemons in an unforgettable scene. Arguably Malle at his very best.