Lancaster plays Lou, a man who brags about a flamboyant and high profile career in crime but in reality is a small time loser with dreams that never succeeded into making him anything more than a two bit hood. He and Sarandon live in the same apartment building and he watches her constantly through his window and secretly falls in love. Director Louis Malle brilliantly directed this film with a distinctly European flavour and managed to tell a story without pretention and one full of strong characters. Sarandon plays a casino employee training to become a hot shot card dealer and that isn't the only deal that goes down. Her sister and lover come to visit and the lover (Canadian actor Robert Joy) becomes involved in a drug deal which embroils Sarandon and Lancaster heavily in the plot.

Lancaster's character would prove to have some noble qualities as he tries to protect Sarandon's honor and life from the scum of society. His romantic consumation of their relationship is based purely on lust while Sarandon uses him in a somewhat justifiable manner out of a sense of survival and need. It's one of the most unusual love stories you will ever see. 'Atlantic City' manages to convince its audience that while it stands up as a respectable character study, it's also a story of human nature at its most immoral and has the stamina to invoke itself as a classic motion picture without popularity but takes its place as a buried treasure.

Other members of the cast are largely made up of talented actors and notable personalities such as English born but Canadian raised Kate Reid and Canadians Hollis McLaren, Harvey Atkin and Al Waxman.