Atlantic City [DVD]

Amazon.co.uk Review French New Wave director Louis Malle made two pieces of memorable Americana in mid-career, Atlantic City (1980) and Pretty Baby (1978). Atlantic City stars Burt Lancaster in one of his greatest screen performances: as an ageing crook now working the numbers racket from a seedy apartment in the casino town of Atlantic City. Susan Sarandon is a waitress whose brother is on the run from the mob, having stolen a cache of drugs. She and Lancaster form an odd but engaging couple and hatch a plot to beat the odds stacked against them. Atmospheric, bittersweet, with lots of character and some neat action: it all adds up to a pretty classy offering. On the DVD: Unfortunately, the picture and sound quality on the DVD are only average. The image is 14:9 ratio and has been taken from a print of variable quality in which some reels are barely adequate. There are no additional features. --Ed Buscombe Product Description Louis Malle's tale of dreamers and low-lifes stars Susan Sarandon as Sally, a croupier whose good-for-nothing ex-husband (Robert Joy) gets into trouble with the mob over the theft of some cocaine. The mob kill the ex-husband but they fail to lay their hand on the drugs, which have been left with Sally's neighbour Lou (Burt Lancaster), a small-time criminal who has fantasies of being an old-time gangster. Sally and Lou recognise that this is their big chance to make their dreams come true and decide to sell the cocaine themselves.