Rain Man (1988)
Two top stars at the top of their form illuminate Rain Man
with dazzling tour de force performances by Tom Cruise and Dustin
Hoffman making it doubly entrancing.
Cruise is Charlie Babbitt, a vain, scheming Hollywood hustler
whose father dies and leaves $3 million to his autistic brother
Raymond (an institutionalised idiot savant).
Outraged, Charlie kidnaps his brother for ransom and hits the
road to LA, planning to fleece him out of his inheritance.
In one of 1989's most awesome performances, Dustin Hoffman
plays the childlike Raymond - He will not wear underwear unless it
comes from K Mart. If he misses his daily TV instalments of Peoples
Court he flies into a tantrum.
Rigid and emotionally dead, Raymond does, however, have a
genius for numbers. Drop a box of toothpicks on the floor and he
can tell you the exact number with one glance.
With Raymond's mathematical computer of a mind, Charlie drags
him to Las Vegas in a scheme to cheat the Blackjack dealers, and
in the process learns to love unselfishly the brother who can
never love back. By the time he racks up $85,000, Charlie has
fallen for Raymond.
This is a tender, funny look at brotherly love. Despite its
sweep at the 1989 Oscars (Best Picture, Director, Actor, and
Screenplay), it's not a big movie, but Hoffman makes every complex
facet of an autistic believable without ever exploiting Raymond's
mental disorder.
Cruise really grows up as an actor of substance playing a
greedy, self-centred jerk who learns how to feel and share his
life with a brother who may never be able to love him back in the
same way.
Both actors give their finest performances, and director Barry
Levinson finds the perfect balance between comedy and
pathos.
Rain Man is not just another 'Disease of the Month'
weepie, it's a touching trip into the unexpected, without a single
pothole along the way.
Disclaimer : Before you rush off to Vegas with your estranged
autistic brother, you should know that card counting only improves
your chances of winning a Blackjack hand by 1.5%.
That counting gives you any advantage at all is the only reason
casino's came down so hard on the practice (although it isn't
actually illegal).
That it's not a foolproof way of amassing a fortune is reason
enough to leave your mentally-bewildered sibling in the
maximum-security home you found him in!
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