The Hustler

“They called him Fast Eddie. He was a winner. He was a loser. He was a hustler.”

In 1961, in the pool halls where money changes hands over green felt, Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) is a small-time hustler with more talent than sense. He walks into a match against the legendary Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason), sure that his nerve is enough to take the best player around. Robert Rossen follows a young man whose skill is real and whose pride keeps getting in the way, and Eddie never learns to separate the two.