Paul Thomas Anderson is probably my favorite director that came out of the 90's. He has a dark side to his films, but he doesn't dwell on it to be edgy. It just seems like reality. Sure, a reality that he wants to show us, but all directors are like that. All good directors are like that. This was his first. It stars many actors that he would reuse for later films which are John C. Reily, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and of course Phillip Baker Hall. This film was influenced by Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob le Flambeur which is understandable with its gambling themes and Phillip Baker Haller playing a character that is almost exactly like Bob. Hell even Gwyneth Paltrow's and John C. Reily's characters seemed lifted from that film. This film is definately not PTA's best in terms of screenwriting. It is filled with episodes that don't really add much. The whole episode with Sydney and Jimmy seems like it was lifted from a soap opera. The performances were relatively strong, but there was some instances that just didn't seem very natural. This is a very good feature debut from a director, but does not compare to the two films that followed this. While watching this, I came up with some connections between PTA and another director with the same last name that came out of the 90's, Wes Anderson. PTA's films deal with family. Wes's mainly deal with the father figure. Some of PTA's films have heavy themes dealing with fathers. This film does and so does Magnolia. Other than that, there really is no connection between the two filmmakers, but it is interesting how they deal with the themes. Paul seems more concerned with the father's perspective while Wes's films seem to come from the child's perspective except for maybe Life Aquatic and I'm not sure with Royal Tenenbaums. I enjoyed this film and some scenes that I thought were very good like the motel hostage scene. My feelings probably would have been different if the ending didn't feel so unsatisfying.
*** out of ****
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