The Big Town

Directed by Ben Bolt, The Big Town follows circa 1950s crapshooter J.C. Cullen (Matt Dillon) as he heads to the big city to make his fortune as a professional gambler – with complications ensuing after he falls in love with a stripper (Diane Lane’s Lorry) and runs afoul of her abusive husband (Tommy Lee Jones’ George). Filmmaker Bolt, working from Robert Roy Pool’s script, delivers an exceedingly familiar drama that fares best in its entertaining, briskly-paced first half, as the fairly run-of-the-mill storyline is, at the outset, allayed by strong performances and a smattering of admittedly engrossing sequences – with, in terms of the former, Dillon’s appealing turn as the picture’s protagonist matched by an impressively-stacked supporting cast that includes Cherry Jones, Tom Skerritt, Suzy Amis, and Bruce Dern. (Dern is responsible for the movie’s single most compelling sequence, as his blind character tells a riveting story about how he came to lose his vision.) It’s disappointing to note, then that The Big Town fizzles out to a fairly distressing degree once it passes the one-hour mark, and there’s little doubt, certainly, that the film’s failure is due in no small part to the increasingly far-from-enthralling nature of its central game (ie dice-rolling isn’t, as it turns out, the most exciting or cinematic of games, ultimately) – with the end result an underwhelming misfire that squanders its roster of top-notch performances.

** out of ****