A good film but a disinteresting and lack-lustre middle section stops it being a great one

Rating: Null/10 (10 June 2004)

'Fast' Eddie Felson is a pool hustler who is small-time despite his attitude and mouth. His attitude leads him to challenge the mighty Minnesota Fats to a game of pool, a game that lasts for over 24 hours and leaves Eddie broken and broke. Eddie dumps his manager and goes back to working small poolrooms for small change, hooking up with an alcoholic girlfriend who he met in a bus station and settling into life on the bottom.
Widely regarded as a classic, it has been a few years since I last saw this film (well  almost a decade) so I decided to rewatch it in order to be able to review it properly rather than just writing off from memory. The film opens well with the scenes that are the strongest of the film  the hustling scenes in the poolrooms. However once the film gets past Eddie's emasculation by Minnesota Fats it enters into it's middle section where we watch Eddie slowly hit rock bottom before starting to try and get up again. It is this section that takes up most of the running time and it is this section that contains many of the film's weaknesses. As Eddie falls deeper, the film trades in its atmospheric style for something more akin to social realism. Given that this is the gut of the film it is a major problem that it really fails to engage to the same degree that the other parts do. It feels a little dated and obvious and, although it still works, it is not effective enough drama to be worthy of it's place on so many critics' top whatever list.
However the real drama works well in the pool scenes and the related bits, these are delivered with style, good dialogue and atmosphere to boot. The characters spark off each other here and at times you can feel the silence in the room as if you were there  like Eddie himself says, silent like a church. It is in these scenes where Eddie changes both times and it is therefore here that the drama works best. Of course we needed the middle section to deliver a story and give us Eddie's whole tale as opposed to some cool and stylish pool (like Scorsese mostly did) but it is overlong (it didn't need to be literally a long night of the soul!).
The cast perform well and really help the film. Newman is very good even if you can see that he knows this is a good role for him  the odd time you could see he was showboating a little but he mostly kept his performance accessible and under control. Laurie has less to work with and is merely a driver for Eddie's actions at the end and a comfort for him in their shared destruction; her performance is OK but she is left to carry the weight of the film's middle section. Scott is good despite only being in part of the film while Gleason and Hamilton are both fine in small roles.
Overall I felt pressure to really love this film because it is a classic and so highly regarded by the majority of critics. While I did love parts of it and liked it on the whole, I didn't think the main middle section was really that good  it got itself bogged down and delivered too little over too long a time. It still works sort of but it isn't good enough as a story to be worthy of such high praise as it is often given. The pool scenes are really well done and it is here where we see just how stylish, gripping and interesting the film can be as the characters really spark off each other with a palatable tension but sadly, for me, these scenes only served to show up the middle sections failings all the more. A good film but for my money not a great one.