Amazon.com Essentials:
Martin Scorsese handles directing duties in this 1986 sequel
to the classic 1961 film The Hustler, which
marks the return of Paul Newman to the role of pool shark Fast Eddie
Felson. Anxious to break into the big time again, Eddie finds a
talented protégé (Tom Cruise) to groom; but with the
addition of the latter's manipulative girlfriend (Mary Elizabeth
Mastrantonio) and the wild streak in Cruise's character, the trio make
for a fascinating portrait in group psychology. The cast is brilliant,
the script by Richard Price (Clockers) is a
paragon of tightly controlled character study and drama (at least in
the film's first half), and Scorsese and cinematographer Michael
Ballhaus make an ornate show of the collision and flight of pool balls
through space--something of a metaphor for the dynamics among the
three principals. The film is generally regarded as weaker in its
second half, and rightly so, as everything that was interesting in the
first place disappears. Still, Newman won a deserved Oscar for his
performance. --Tom Keogh
