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Reviews
Sydney (1996)
If you liked 'Atlantic City', you'll love this one.
Caught it last night on Belgian TV. A little gem. An old guy, superbly played by Baker Hall, trying to relive his youth by helping two young losers (O'Reilly and Paltrow) get their lives back together. Of course they'll never make it: once a loser, always a loser. But Sydney still has to try. The claustrophobic, rip-off world of casinos, anonymous 'luxury' hotels, sleazy motels, is superbly portrayed. Surely, after watching this film, nobody would ever want to visit Vegas. Paltrow is brilliant as the whore with zero self-esteem, ready to destroy her chance of a new start for the sake of 300 bucks; money is the only way of validating her self-destructive promiscuity. Samuel Jackson swaggers through the role of Satan as if born to it. The only jarring note, preventing this one getting a 9/10, is the stuff about Sydney wanting to atone for shooting the young guy's father. This feels like it was written in as an afterthought, by some dumb studio exec who'd missed the film's whole point: 'The tragedy of youth is old age' (Oscar Wilde).