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If you grew up in the 80s or 90s, you probably had at least one friend whose father kept a pool table in the garage.  This movie was probably the reason why.

Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) was once The Hustler, the legendary pool player who recovered from having his fingers broken with a bowling ball and went on to defeat the legendary Minnesota Fats.  That was a long time ago.  Now, Fast Eddie is a slick liquor salesman in Chicago.  Eddie stills hangs out at the pool halls, despite his bad memories of the game.  When he sees a cocky young player named Vincent (Tom Cruise) and his girlfriend Carmen (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), he takes them under his wing and teaches them how to hustle.  It’s not always easy because Vincent doesn’t like to lose, even if it means a chance to score an even bigger victory later on.  Eddie finds himself being drawn back into the game, even as he starts to wonder who is hustling who.

I always forget that The Color of Money is a Martin Scorsese films.  It’s a film that Scorsese made at a time when he had a reputation for only being able to make art films that critics loved but audiences stayed away from.  After the box office failure of The King of Comedy and his abortive first attempt to make The Last Temptation of Christ, Scorsese took The Color of Money to prove that he could work with a studio.  This is a Disney Scorsese film, with his signature camera moves but not much of his religious torment.  Even if it’s not one of his personal films, Scorsese makes pool look exciting, a battle that is as much about psychology as physicality.  Watching The Color of Money, you can smell the chalk on the tip of the pool cue.

Scorsese brings the seedy pool halls to life but it’s Paul Newman’s performance that dominates.  The Color of Money won Newman his first and only Oscar and he deserved it.  Newman had first played Fast Eddie Felson in 1961, in The Hustler.  Returning to the role twenty-five years later allowed Newman to show what would eventually happen to the angry young men that he played in the 60s.  Eddie has grown up and he’s got a comfortable life but he’s not content.  He finally has stability but he misses the game.  He needs the thrill of the hustle.  Newman is at his best in The Color of Money, building on The Hustler but also revealing new sides of Eddie Felson.

Newman is so good that Tom Cruise often gets overlooked but both Cruise and Mastrantonio hold their own against Paul Newman.  Cruise especially does a good job as Vincent, playing him as someone who is too cocky for his own good but also not as dumb as he looks.  Just when you think you’ve got Vincent figured out, Cruise surprises you.  The Color of Money came out the same year as Top Gun and Cruise’s Vincent feels like a commentary on the talented, troubled, but cocky characters that Cruise was playing at that time.  Cruise, Scorsese, and Newman make a good team in this more-than-worthy sequel.