“As if his 1940s noir hoodlum had lived to see the 1980s, Lancaster’s Lou Pasco catches only faint echoes of those glory days between his small numbers-running and petty errand-running for an aging widow of a notorious gangster. As Atlantic City disintegrates before him, Lou maintains his dignity and a tender awareness of the station to which age and cultural change have taken him. When a drug deal brings the crime underworld on his heels, money in his pocket, and a charming young woman at his side, he accepts this second youth with a giddy astonishment and chivalrous self-possession tempered by the wisdom of age. Rather than fall into tried-and-true mannerisms, Lancaster embraces Louis Malle’s sweet rendering with the restraint of an actor humbly consenting to yet another reincarnation.”—Harvard Film Archive.
