The Hustler review

 Number 226 on the top 1000 films of all time is the 1961 drama 'The Hustler.'

Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) is a small-time pool hustler who wishes to make the big league by challenging legendary pool player Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason.) When Felson is crushed by Fats in a game, Felson vows to beat him the next time they play.

I really did not care for this film at all. If I were to describe it in one word, it would just be boring. Part of that is down to me and my own personal taste, I have never been that interested in pool. Or at least not interested enough to watch a 134 minute film on the subject. But the other main reason would be for the lack of musical score. I find that the music in a film can really make or break it. 

At times it can be far too loud *cough cough Christopher Nolan/Hunger Games,* at other times it can evoke entire eras like how Tarantino uses popular music in his films. And, in rare cases, the lack of incidental music can really up the tension.

This was not one of those cases. The music, or lack thereof, should pair well with what we see on the screen. And that wasn't the case here. Even though much of the on-screen action was nothing to be interested by, it could have been made interesting through the use of incidental music. The fact that there was little of it did next to nothing to help things. 

The Hustler was originally based on a book by Walter Tevis. When adapting this book, director Robert Rossen was keen to focus more on the characters and their relationships with each other rather than on the pool itself. Did he succeed in that? I don't think he did. There was still too much focus on the pool rather than on an actual likeable main character that I wanted to root for. Obviously Felson doesn't need to be likeable to make me curious to see whether he will succeed, but he needed to be interesting, and I didn't find him very interesting at all. He was arrogant and obnoxious.

As the Hustler is number 226 on the list of 1000 films of all time, I'm sure there are lots of people who found it interesting. In fact, it revitalised American interest in pool. However, I did not care for the film at all.