Still Watching: Two Overlooked Movies that Deserve a Little More Attention

I have two movies that I want to talk about. Usually when a critic does this, there is some connection, thematic or otherwise, for him to discuss these films in the same context; but, in this case, I can make out no real commonality other than both are by great directors, both are concerned with manipulation, both include at least one metaphor comparing people to horses, and I saw both movies within the same twenty-four hour period.

The first of the movies in "The Color of Money." So that you know, it is a 1986 movie directed by Martin Scorsese, the cinematic genius behind "Taxi Driver," "Goodfellas" and "The Departed." (His most overrated movies to date are : "Mean Streets," "The Age of Innocence," "Gangs of New York" and "the Aviator," though "Raging Bull" could also, arguably be categorized with these others.) "The Color of Money" is widely considered to be Mr. Scorsese's worst movie and, of all of them, it is probably the only one that no one knows about. But, as will be made plain, this rejection is unjustified.

Few movie-fans (or at least few that I know) remember the movie "The Hustler," the somewhat tragic story of a pool player named Fast Eddie Felson, but you hardly need to know this story to see Paul Newman resume the role, decades later, with perfect confidence. Newman's role (which won the 1986 award for Best Actor) is quiet and rarely poignant--the cynicism and professionalism with which Mr. Newman imbues the character makes it hard for the audience to feel sorry for him--but his performance is never less than convincing and, what's more important, the old hustler manages to seduce the audience while conning others also.

Mr. Newman's Eddie is the right guide to the underworld of Nine Ball, not only for the audience but also for his protege Vincent Varia (Tom Cruise) a kid with a cocky attitude, a "sledge-hammer break" and a silly haircut. This is not Tom Cruise's best performance, by any means, but he dispenses of heavy dose of the energy that would later inform his greatest roles (think "Jerry Maguire" and "Collateral".) Furthermore, Cruise is capable of holding his own against his veteran companion; in fact, much of the movie is devoted to Eddie trying to tame Vince and make him into a first-rate conman as they drift from nine ball game to nine ball game, culminating in a tournament in Atlantic City (by that point, the two have parted ways and Eddie is playing once again.)

The complaint I have most often heard about this movie is that Scorsese only made it so that he could also make "The Last Temptation of Christ." Translation: It has no signature elements and is merely a commercial franchise to make its studio money. Even the Academy Award does not seem to have redeemed it much. But Mr. Scorsese has a style that is well-suited to the chemistry of his two leads and, more generally, the game of nine ball. When the characters play, Scorsese often films the table from the white ball's point-of-view, as it collides with the colored balls in vigorous momentum; he uses jump-cuts and fast-motion (slow-motion also, at times) to vivify the game in a way that is so often lost in screen transmutations and when the balls crack together, the crack is loud and satisfying. Scorsese's voice has a cameo performance in the opening credits; using a voice-over to describe the rules of nine ball seems ridiculous theoretically, but his closing line "luck itself is an art" (followed by Robbie Robertson's score) is so memorable and is executed so stylishly executed that the credits do not only not stall the picture, but they add to it. Forest Whitaker also has a memorable and extraordinarily funny cameo role as a lab-rat/pool-hustler, but, after the movie ends, you are most likely to remember Paul Newman's memorable last line: "I'm back" before breaking a diamond of nine-balls. He certainly is, and the movie, even though it is largely ignored, is still here.

The other movie that I rewatched was "Eastern Promises," David Cronenberg's crime saga staring Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts. This movie, in spite of its critical acclaim, had not, from what I can tell, reached a wide audience even though it reached out to them. The first time I saw it was only two months ago in a Pullman theater; I didn't expect to see it on DVD until next February at least. It is a pity that the movie was not more popular because it was one of the best movies that I had seen all year, and it still is. (I think that it was even better the second time that I saw it.)

The story is not unlike others that Steven Knight, the screenwriter, has written. As A. O. Scott pointed out, all of Mr. Knight's scripts deal, in some capacity, with slavery. "Dirty Pretty Things," Steven Frears's 2002 drama, told a story of the underground organ-trade in Great Britain whereas Michael Apted's "Amazing Grace" (released earlier this year) chronicled William Wilberforce's efforts to abolish the African slave-trade in the early 18th century. But unlike the slavery of those two earlier movies, the slavery depicted in "Eastern Promises" is that of the sex-trade, an underground economy that subjugates both the body and soul.

The first of the film's protagonists that we meet is Anna, Naomi Watts's midwife, who delivers a child of a Russian girl who dies during the procedure. What starts as a search for the child's father becomes a fight for its survival as Anna digs deeper into the girl's past (and diary) to find that she was one of many Russian girls imported for prostitution and that the child is the product of a rape by a prominent Russian godfather (Armin Mueller-Stahl). The ambivalent characters of the story are Calil (Vincent Cassel), the godfather's drunkard son who bears some characteristic resemblance to Fredo from Francis Ford Coppola's classic pictures, and Mr. Mortensen's driver, a Russian gangster who is rising in the organization and has enough Russian pictures tattooed on his body to be a travel brochure. Mr. Mortensen (who is, unfortunately, best known as Aragorn in the "LOTR" trilogy) demonstrated that he was an actor capable of great depth, power and paradox in Cronenberg's "A History of Violence," but, here, his work is more alluring and enigmatic, and arguably better because his character is more consistent.

Mr. Cronenberg is a director who is very fond of shadows and intense colors, as demonstrated in movies like "The Fly" and "Spider" (yes, despite the titles, those are different movies). His colors and shadows are on display in "Eastern Promises" from beginning to end and serve the environments in which they appear well: the purple drapery and balloons of the house of Mr. Mueller-Stahl's character reinforces the secretiveness and unpredictability of their organization, as do the darkened rooms in which they hold council and listen to Russian anthems. But Mr. Cronenberg's favorite color is definitely red, especially because it is the color of blood. He is, with Brian De Palma, an affinity for blood splayed with a very broad brush and, in what has become the most famous scene in the movie, a knife fight in a Turkish bath where Mr. Mortensen wears nothing but a picture of the Kremlin, the cuts look rough and sound painful. One can only imagine what the newspaper would say.

But, taken as a whole, "Eastern Promises" is not a violence-saturated movie, even though it does have some violent scenes. The movie actually has more in common with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's masterpiece "The Lives of Others." Like that movie, this one displays a system which drains the individual of his or her soul but cannot insure that this loss is permanent.