Continuing with my new writing series, “Worst Gambling Movies of All Time,” here’s my choice for #24.
Title and Year: The Big Town (1987)
Director(s): Harold Becker / Ben Bolt
Actors: Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, Tommy Lee Jones
Synopsis: A small-town “professional dice shooter” arrives in Chicago, plays craps for a living, and somehow never loses.
Matt Dillon is a professional dice shooter. Yep, a craps pro. Let that percolate for a moment.
It’s 1957 and J.C. Cullen (a.k.a. Cully) bolts his humble hayseed Indiana small town determined to make a splash in the big city. The big town is Chicago, which apparently has plenty of job prospects for aspiring professional craps players.
He’s drawn to action, and the biggest action is at underground casinos run by gangsters. He decides to go to work for a seedy gambling syndicate, headed by Mr. and Mrs. Edwards. During his initial job interview, Mrs. Edwards played by Lee Grant sizes him up and down then demands: “Let me see your dice.”
Cully looks puzzled, then reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out two six-sided cubes.
“From now on, you will use our dice,” she insists.
Got it.
So, gamblers bring their own dice to illegal craps games, just like Big Jule from East Cicero in Guys and Dolls. Yeah, apparently it’s common practice to shoot dice for real money against the guy who walks in and supplies his own set of dice. If so, I need to book a flight to Chicago with these special dice I bought from the mail-order catalog!
The Big Town had the royal pedigree of joning the pantheon of gambling movie classics but instead, it ends up as a clunker. Martin Ransohoff produced this film, whose name may be unfamiliar. But surely, you will know his work. Consider Ransohoff also produced The Hustler (1961) and The Cincinnati Kid (1966). Accordingly, this third in an unspoken gambling trilogy should have been a far better movie.
The casting of Matt Dillon, at the time one of Hollywood’s brightest young prospects, created lots of pre-production Hollywood buzz. During the casting phase Ransohoff predicted: “This could do it for Matt Dillon as The Hustler did for Paul Newman and Cincinnati Kid for Steve McQueen!”
In this regard, Dillon sevens out. Line away!
Two supporting actors absolutely must be discussed here. Tommy Lee Jones plays the bad guy. He runs the biggest dice game in Chicago, and even works a mean stick all while hoovering over the craps layout and eyeballing every bet like the eye-in-the-sky. Business is booming. The rails are always packed with bug-eyed gamblers tossing thick wads of cash onto the felt like cocktail napkins stacked up at a bar. As I said, I need to check this place out!
But that’s nothing compared to the action between the sheets. Let’s really load this dice drama with some excitement: Tommy Lee Jones, the ballbuster-thug running the craps game is married to a young hottie, and Cully starts banging the guy’s wife. Wow. How’s that for humiliation? It’s bad enough Cully shoots dice like Tom Brady throws footballs and beats the house with every throw. But does he also have to get away with porking the pit boss’ wife? Oh, the humanity!
Cully is the luckiest dice shooter ever captured in the history of cinema. Every session, he wins! $8,000, then, $10,000, then $15,000, then $17,000, and pretty soon this is all too easy and Cully wants to shoot for the land deed to the joint. When he gets bored (or has a rendezvous scheduled with Mrs. Tommy Lee Jones), the impatient Cully snap declares this game is way too slow and wants to jack it up.
“Shoot it all!” he barks over and over again impervious to any table limits. Naturally, Tommy Lee Jones is eager to take all the action the kid lays down on the felt and then grows increasingly flustered and furious with the final outcome when Cully shoots yet another sweet winner the hardway.
“Shoot it all!”
“Winner! Pay the line!”
Gee, Tommy, you might want to inspect those dice.
Dillon’s character is the predictable young punk, a sort of dice-firing version of Tom Cruise’s “Vince” character in The Color of Money, coincidentally released the same year. Remarkably, despite all the cockiness and hammy showmanship, after breaking the house, Cully leaves these smoke-filled underground dice games with his pockets stuffed with cash, yet somehow makes it through the maze of Chicago’s streets and back alleys to his apartment. Wow, he’s one lucky dude!
There’s some other stuff going on, too, but that’s the gist of The Big Town.
But wait! There’s more! I squirreled away the best roasty chestnut for last. Let’s talk about “Mr. Edwards.” Remember him? That’s the guy married to Mrs. Edwards, who wanted to see Matt Dillon’s dice in that early scene.
Mr. Edwards is blind. Story goes, some punk kid with a heart tattoo on his arm slung battery acid on Mr. Edwards eyes years ago. Man, that sucks. Yet, for some reason Mr. Edwards is still angry about it. Talk about hanging onto the past and holding a grudge! Mr. Edwards couldn’t possibly be played by anyone other than (drum roll, please)….Bruce Fucking Dern.
Actually, a correction: Bruce Dern plays Bruce Dern. You know, the broken bitter man he always plays in every movie who looks like he’s just seconds away from commiting a homide or having a nervous breakdown, or both. Or, for those under 40, he’s the father of Laura Dern.
Displaying all the charm of an animal that’s just been stuffed by a taxidermist, Dern has but one goal in his dark miserable life. He’s made it his life’s mission to hunt down the whippersnapper who turned his eyes into baked casserole. Playing detective is a challlenge, though. How’s he going identify the culprit since he can’t see the heart tattoo? So, he wants Cully (Dillon) to be his eyes in the craps games. That punk will turn up eventually. Drats. I won’t give away any spoilers.
We love us some Bruce Dern — remember Jim Carrey’s kick-ass impression at the Oscars:
The Big Town sounds like a great-bad film, watchable for all the wrong reasons. However, the movie’s worst offense is inflicting boredom. It’s just not very interesting to watch. In fact, it was far more fun to write about.
”I don’t believe in luck, Cully says. “A gambler gets what he deserves, nothing more.”
Umm, okay. Got it.
Oh, and be sure and cover up that heart tattoo.
Here’s the official trailer:
Worst Gambling Movies
#25 My Daughter’s Secret Life (2001)