In a corrupt city, a small-time gangster (Burt Lancaster) and the estranged wife (Susan Sarandon) of a pot dealer (Some Guy) finds themselves thrown together in an escapade of love, money, drugs, and danger.You might think this film would get a second life following the success of "Boardwalk Empire". Certainly, few movies have really focused on gangsters in Atlantic City. And here, we have a guy who claimed to know Bugsy Siegel, Dutch Schultz, and all the old time mobsters. Fiction, yes, but still good ground for a story.Not the most exciting film, but it is really more about introspection than about mob violence and action. And that deserves some level of praise.

This film is about a woman working in Atlantic City, whose husband tries to sell the cocaine he found from some gangsters."Atlantic City" has a straight forward story, told linearly in a matter of fact manner. There is little left to the imagination. In addition, the characters are underdeveloped. Take Grace for an example, she could have been a fascinating character, but she is such a dispensable character that could have been deleted from the film. Lou's claims to be a big time gangster years ago is beyond comprehension either. As a result, I did not feel for the characters, I did not get engaged by the events in the film, and I found it rather plain and dull.As "Atlantic City" got five Oscar nominations, I had great hopes for it. I am left disappointed by it after watching it.

The story of an ageing two bit numbers runner and his unusual relationship with an ambitious waitress, trying to make it as a croupier, might not sound like the most exciting storyline, but I couldn't remember a moment in the film when I wasn't hooked. Malle's direction in showing the old and new, the past and the future, with Atlantic City as the backdrop (gambling had only been legalised in New Jersey in 1979) is beyond criticism. Lancaster and Sarandon represent all this from the character side and both give exception performances. The plot in many ways plays second fiddle to the character building, the relationship between the two protagonists and the numerous metaphors used throughout.Robert Joy has stolen a bag of cocaine from the mob and is soon on the run with his pregnant girlfriend (McLaren) and hides out at her sister's flat (Sarandon), who is also his ex-wife. He then by chance, meets Lancaster (who is also Sarandon's neighbour and is infatuated with her), who likes to make out he was a big time person, but is and always was a nothing! This leads to Lancaster helping out in what he hopes will make him a somebody at last before a completely new city he won't know is built and people who don't want to know him arrive.If you haven't seen this or heard much about it, please do so. It truly is one of those gems a film that is ageless and works on every level! One of the best films of the 1980's!

The New Jersey resort of the film's title is very much the main character in this colorful, original drama, set in a community looking toward the future but living in the past. Against a vivid backdrop of decaying splendor and shallow glamour the film gathers together several odd, unrelated characters in an unpredictable series of stories involving an aging petty gangster, an aspiring young casino croupier, two hippies on the run with a stolen roll of cocaine, and sundry other killers, dreamers, and fortune hunters. For lack of a better tag, and because both city and script are built around the magnetic lure of easy money, the film might be called a crime story, but the richness of John Guare's screenplay, filled as it is with broken dreams and rose colored memories (says a nostalgic Bert Lancaster, "You should've seen the Atlantic Ocean back then…") can't be pigeon-holed so lightly.