Hard Eight

“If you stay in the game long enough, you'll see everything, win everything, and lose everything.”

Outside a Reno diner, an older gambler named Sydney (Philip Baker Hall) offers a coffee and a stake to John (John C. Reilly), a young man with no money and no plan. He gives no reason, and John takes the help anyway. Paul Thomas Anderson's first feature follows the two into the casinos, where the lessons start and a debt between them begins to build.