The movie works like "Hustling" but with reverse effects ...

Rating: 7/10 (11 October 2011)

Paul Newman is back to the green table to win more and more green billets, but let me ask you something, do you really need colors to know what the color of money is?
Paul Newman was "The Hustler" in a masterpiece of character study, now he's the stake-horse and Tom Cruise's mentor in the sequel directed by Martin Scorsese. Why Scorsese? Well, Robert Rossen's film was a psychological introspection into the concepts of winning and losing, whose effects ultimately alienated Eddie's life. The thirst for victory was Eddie's obsession, and as many tragic antiheroes, it was only through after a tragedy that his soul could find redemption. In a way, "The Hustler" carried many Scorsesian undertones through this theme of guilt and redemption, so cherished by Marty, so it's only poetic justice if he directed the sequel.
But the question is 'did the movie ever need a sequel?' I'm not asking because I didn't like the story, but I liked it less as a sequel. As an independent film featuring Paul Newman and Tom Cruise in a mentor/disciple relationship, the film was OK in my book and provided many spectacular shots. The color of money was one thing, but these balls kicking each other kicked ass, and provided the artistic touch of the film. But as a sequel, a few things really connected this movie to its glorious predecessor, to the point I wondered why they felt the need to name Paul Newman's character Eddie Felson. After all, no reference to Bert Gordon, to Minnesota Fats, to SARAH for God's sake! All these characters sank into oblivion and any attempt to resurrect an ounce of the past vanished in favor of the plot that sinned by its unoriginality, not as a sequel time time, but as a Scorsese film.
Martin Scorsese is among my favorite directors, but I'm glad I'm not blinded enough not to differentiate between what I believe to be his great and his more average work. I think he was at the top of his game in the 80's with such powerful dramas as "Raging Bull", "The King of Comedy", "After Hours", with such a streak, "The Color of Money" should have been a winner, but a winner, it ain't. It' doesn't take a great director and actor to make a film, you need a story, and whatever the original intent was, I fail to see what the insights the movie was supposed to provide were, let alone on Felson whose story arc was satisfyingly closed, so I guess the central character was supposed to be Cruise as Vincent  why not? But as I was waiting for the coming-of-age aspect to finally redeem Vincent, the ending didn't give him much more depth. It's like Vincent embodied the pretentious premise of the film, that just because it's Newman, Scorsese, Cruise, Eddie Felson and pool, the mix would automatically work.
Take the game that was the basis of the plot, the 9-shot, nothing against it, but when you consider the rules, you realize how short and nonstrategic it feels, as stated in the opening sentence, its all about luck, right, even luck is art, but I didn't see that in the film. The whole thing was like "Pool for Dummies", quick, noisy, flamboyant, the film could have even been about bowling, all flash with no substance. And even the smallest attempt to rationalize and to see the film through the relationship between Eddie and Vincent doesn't work, Vince is too cocky and pretentious to make his appeal to Eddie believable, he's nothing like Eddie in "The Hustler" not even by the 80's standards, and I wonder if the film wouldn't have been more interesting with the character played by Forest Whitaker.
Eddie is so better than Vincent that it's not that we can't believe, we don't even want to believe. The movie tries to show Eddie as a character with some wound to conceal, but if it ever was the case, nothing came at the end to reward our patience. And it's a pity, because the actors did a fine job, and I want to mention the great performance by Mary Elizabeth Mastroianno, as the sexy manipulative girlfriend Carmen, now there was a character on the same caliber than Gordon, or Fats, but at the end, it's like her potential is underused, not even for a sentimental dilemma that exceeds the limits of the green table.
What was wrong with Marty? When you consider "Raging Bull", on the surface the movie is a repetition of the same behavior that gets so annoying it gets on our nerves, but it needed the performance of De Niro and the devouring torment of his jealousy to transcend the banality of his character and elevate it to the level of an iconic performance of anger and jealousy. Vince is simply too immature and Eddie too tired to reach that level of intensity, and if only Carmen could inspire a "Did you (you know) my wife" scene, I'm serious, this is the kind of savor that was cruelly missing in the film.
And to conclude, where was the final confrontation between Eddie and Vince, was it too much asking for? Even "The Hustler" didn't avoid this mandatory conclusion, because this is what we all expect, do we really need to accept Eddie's "I'm back" for granted? We know he's back but it's time for him to get back to the action, to be the player, not the thinker. That ending seemed too deliberately cool to be believable and makes the whole films look like a long passionless pool game, without even playing the black at the end.
Not a bad film, it had the atmosphere, the colors, the flash, the direction, but the film works like 'hustling', with reverse effects ...