Atlantic City

Director: Louis Malle, Louis Malle, Louis Malle

1980 / 104min / 35mm

Burt Lancaster gives one of his finest late-career performances as former numbers runner and aging mob lackey Lou, a rusty relic of an old Atlantic City that, in the course of Malle’s sweetly rueful film, we watch in the process of being pulled down to make way for shiny new casinos and hotels. Lou’s misty-eyed nostalgia won’t bring back the past, but when beautiful neighbor Susan Sarandon lands in some trouble, the graying gunsel sees his final shot to play the tough-guy hero. “Operates by its own laws in its own world, and it has a lovely fizziness.”—Pauline Kael, The New Yorker