what a letdown

Rating: 5/10 (5 May 2005)

Paul Newman? He is a master of creating mystery and intrigue. This movie is a jewel, I am so thoroughly enjoying it! and Tom looks young! this must have been made right around the Top Gun/ Cocktail era.
This movie is like finding gold buried in your backyard the chemistry of the story and the exceptional performances by Newman and Cruise are the best mentor/prodigy story I can remember seeing. I can see why Cruise rocketed to super stardom; he was such a loose cannon, just a super magnet of charm and success. And he's now a Scientologist, right? Hmmmmm.
Why do I get the feeling that this movie was some sort of passing of the torch? I haven't seen really any Paul Newman movies, but I bet he was damn near the coolest guy on the block for many years (probably sharing status with Clint Eastwood, etc), and this movie seems like everything came together for an up and coming director at the time (Scorsese) to film that magic moment when a former top dog chooses and mentors his prodigy. This is just beautiful, although probably much more interesting to males than females.
The Atlantic City 9 ball tournament isn't set up very well, there isn't a clearcut thing to root for. Tom comes off way too over confident when claiming to have dropped a game to Newman, and then the absolutely worst ending I've seen in a long time.. build it up and build it up and build it up and then just LEAVE the audience hanging. F*** YOU MARTIN SCORSESE! This movie went from an A+ to a C, all because F****** Scorsese couldn't keep a good thing going. Sorry, who am I to criticize the "Great Scorsese"? Tell me that wasn't a phenomenal letdown of an ending.