A couple of months ago my girlfriend bought me 1001 Films to See Before You Die and since then I have scoured it's pages finding what I should watch next. It would be fair to say that it has controlled my life a wee bit. One of the films hidden within was Rain Man, a film I had heard a lot about but never got round to seeing, and when I finally did take the plunge I couldn't quite understand how it had ended up on a list that included The Godfather, All the President's Men, Breaking the Waves etc.
The film begins with a twat (played reliably as ever by Tom Cruise who has made a career out playing this same guy) who is greedy and angry and hurt because his Daddy didn't love him. Said Daddy dies, which rudely interupts Cruise's plan to watch his car dealership go under while screwing his girlfriend, and to really dig the boot in poor old Tom gets none of the millions he really didn't deserve, luckily Tom shows us why he didn't deserve it by reacting in a truly prickish way.
Now the film gets interesting as Tom ends up meeting his brother (by chance as he greedily tries to reclaim the millions he is in no way owed). Raymond, the brother, has severe autism and is played by Dustin Hoffman who chews up every scene, overshadowing Tom Cruise everytime. Cruise kidnaps Raymond in an attempt to blackmail the guardian of his inheritance but grows to love him, at least that's how the story was supposed to go.
Instead Cruise's character is so intensly dislikable that you don't feel any sympathy for him, feeling bad instead for Raymond who should have stabbed his cunt of a younger brother as soon as he saw him. Backstories are revealed and you can't help but feel Raymond should have smothered his brother at birth, and when Cruise is pulled up by a casino manager after using his brother's incredible memory to count cards I found myself hoping we were in for a deleted scene from Casino where Tom has his hands smashed in with a hammer and his head put in a vice. Even at the end where Cruise admits he was wrong and confesses all out brotherly love it felt like he was only doing it because he felt he was entitled to his brother, not because his brother wanted it.
It's a film that had the potential to be a full on weepy, where grown men hug their friends and tell them how much they mean to each other, and it is worth watching just for Dustin Hoffman's performance which is equal parts eye opening and heart warming but Tom Cruise ruins it. His character Charlie Babbat is overrun by greed and any regret he feels by the end is already tainted by the truly prickish way he acts throughout a good 4/5ths of the film.
Worth watching; yes. I wouldn't recommend repeat viewings though as I nearly kicked the screen in just watching Tom Cruise the once.
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