ProfessorFate

Every great director makes a few stinkers, and this is certainly one of Scorcesese's. The problem is he committed a movie "mortal sin" - he actually made Paul Newman look uncool playing a character he had played previously who was very cool. That is unforgivable.

************SPOILERS AHEAD********************

As with so many bad movies it really comes down to a ridiculous script. Eddie Felson, a billiards phenom in his younger days who had been used and tossed away by an unscrupulous gambler, is older and wiser and now acts as the unscrupulous gambler by bankrolling young pool sharks . . . Huh? Did Eddie learn nothing from his earlier experience. A rather unbelievable character flaw considering where Eddie was at the end of "The Hustler"

Eddie decides to go on the road with a hotshot young pool player named Vincent (Tom Cruise) who is crazily cocky, dumb as a box of rocks, and presented in a smarmy way-over-the-top manner by Cruise. Vince has a girlfriend named Carmen (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) who early on reveals that she has no scruples herself. Uh, wait a minute. In "The Hustler" Eddie got involved with a girl, took her on a pool/gambling road trip with his evil gambler mentor and, without giving away the twists of that much better movie, lets just say it ended very badly. Wow, it seems Eddie has contracted a real bad case of memory loss which causes him to make every mistake he has made before. Who's is writing this dreck?

The implausibility's get worse. Eddie gives Vince a very valuable cue stick, sort of a gift to convince him to become his protégé. Then he tells Vince to not use it when he plays - any savvy pool player will see it and immediately identify Vince as a hustler. Okay, so why give it to the brash and volatile young Vincent? Of course Vince goes out without Eddie and takes the cue and mucks up Eddie's gambling game plan. Eddie gets mad and drives his car away, with Vince trying to chase him down like a jilted girlfriend. Then Vince gets mad and Eddie gets in his car and chases down Vince, like an older jilted girlfriend. Meanwhile Carmen is disrobing in front of Eddie every chance she gets. Then they all make up. Then the wise, sage pool hustler Eddie Felson devises a con job which involves putting his grubby old guy hands all over Carmen, knowing full well how jealous and insecure Vince is about his relationship with Carmen. This leads to a cringe-worthy scene after the con job in which Vince acts like the immature teenager he obviously is while Carmen and Eddie try to placate his anger by saying, "We were just acting!" It made me feel a little dirty, watching the great Paul Newman explaining how actors who kiss in movies don't really mean it. Who put these words in his mouth?

There's more, including one of Scorcesese's most gratuitous camera spins, doing 360's around Newman like some drunk teenager doing donuts in his souped-up Chevy in a supermarket parking lot, but why continue? This is simply a bad movie, all the more embarrassing because it almost taints the memory of its superior predecessor . . . almost.

On the plus side, Newman looks great, MEM is very sexy, and Forrest Whitaker turns up in a great cameo as a slightly crazy pool hustler. His character was more interesting during his brief screen time than anything Newman and Cruise could muster.

The rotten cherry on top of this melted pile of ice cream is the fact that THIS is the film for which Newman won his only Oscar. My advice for Newman fans (of which I am definitely one) is to avoid "The Color of Money" and remember the legendary actor for all his other great performances.