Quick recap: An aging gangster tries to continue being relevant. He helps a woman with her estranged husband’s funeral, sells coke and gets into a turf war with mobsters.

And starring Susan Sarandon, who likes to take lemon baths

Fun (?) fact: For a movie about gangsters, there’s a surprisingly sparse amount of trivia on IMDb. The best fact I can find is that shortly after filming the movie, Burt Lancaster nearly died from a gall bladder operation.

I spent a good chunk of time thinking Burt Lancaster was Matlock. Turns out that was Andy Griffith, so I guess I can’t tell my old white guys apart.

My thoughts: Hey! It’s good to be back, or something like that. I’ve had a couple of months of constant sickness, including losing my hearing for two weeks so you’d think I would’ve chosen a stronger film to celebrate my return to hearing. Unfortunately, that’s not how life goes.

I actually started Atlantic City with high hopes. The beginning was engaging, although Sarandon felt out of place. That could just be because I’ve seen her in so many other roles. In this one, she plays the estranged wife of a drug dealer who apparently knocked up her sister and then took off with her. While I wasn’t too keen on her placement, the guy who plays the deadbeat husband is SPOT ON:

Like, so spot on I could imagine what he smelled like. So anyway, Dave (pictured above) comes back with the knocked up sister to sell drugs. From here, a whole bunch of plot stuff happens that I don’t want to get into because a) there’s too much and b) everything plays out how you expect it to, once you know the characters. The other important character is Lou, the aging gangster. He is introduced in the first scene, secretly spying on Sarandon giving herself a lemon bath. She later claims this is to get the fish smell off of her, but I’m pretty sure soap does that. The next scene is of him taking orders from an old lady and running errands for him. So, early on I got the idea that he has a heart of gold but also a mischievous streak in him. Or maybe just a thing for lemon baths.

Skipping ahead to the ending (because I can), Lou eventually shoots and kills two mobsters whom Dave stole coke from. It is revealed that he has a habit of skipping out on friends when their life is in danger, so this is some sort of breakthrough I don’t think most psychologists would endorse. Honestly, the only redeeming part of this movie was the actual setting- Atlantic City. The buildings seemed to have so much character to them and I imagined this rundown resort city, past its prime but ready for its moment. There’s a scene when Robert Goulet drops by to croon and if I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought this was a Lynch film, it was so surreal. There was a part of me that wished I was still deaf so I could just watch the scenes and not have to deal with the wacky plot and subpar characters.

Final review: 2/5.

Up next: Le Samourai