The Color of Money

Paul Newman’s lone Oscar was not just a career compensation award -- he clearly won the Best Actor nod that year. And he carries this film on his own, even with the able assistance of rebounding director Marty Scorsese, Richard Price’s first script, a cocky but appealing Tom Cruise just before Top Gun hit, and a young but calculating Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. There’s a lot of lively camerawork, but I miss the lustrous widescreen b&w of The Hustler. The two films are as similar and as different as the straight pool and nine-ball they respectively depict, and the old and young players share that dialectic between grit and flash. Still Scorsese and Price craft an appropriate story from their signature obsessions, with the brotherhood of low life and the possibility of redemption through excellence. But believe me, Mr. Newman by himself is enough to make this film worth seeing or re-seeing, to watch Fast Eddie return 25 years later, first in the guise of the very manipulator who drove him out of game, and then as the hungry competitor he once was. (1986, dvd, r.) *8*