First came the novel, then the film, both well able to stand alone. Tevis writes a stark, cut-down prose that admirably suits his tale of people who live on the edge of desperation in Fifties Chicago. There is pool-hall hustler Fast Eddie, his opponent Minnesota Fats, the Syndicate gangster Bert, and eternal victim, the crippled Sarah. The components of a universal tragedy in microcosm: life, death, violence, luck and the lack of it, all silently observed by the Greek chorus of Henry, the coloured janitor, and Big John, shooting his eternal practice shot one final time for the evening. A kind of requiem for a sad bunch of characters who diced with fortune and won or lost in their own various ways.
Vincent Banville