Cool Film, Great Cast, Beautifully Shot, weak soundtrack and dull plot:(
I love Scorsese films. My favorites are Raging Bull and Taxi Driver. Marty has a great eye for shots, I love his quick zoom-ins and pull-back shots. I first noticed shots like this in Goodfellas and I love how he is still using them in movies like Wolf Of Wall Street. I just bought and watched Color Of Money last night. My feelings are on the fence. I thought it was well cast, I like the cold, snowy locations, although it would've been nice to see them travel to somewhere warm, just for change of pace in the film. I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED the cinematography, it was VERY Scorsese, very much like Goodfellas, but all about pool. I just feel this movie is missing some things that could have made it a DEFINITE Scorsese masterpiece.
1: I HATED the soundtrack. Certain scenes it was okay (when Eddie is with his lady), but overall the score was annoying and misfit. It would just blare up out of nowhere, going from a music-less scene to loudly cuing in some weird "Talking Heads" style 80's music. It just didn't fit, not with the genre, and NOT with a Scorsese movie. 2 ways the Soundtrack could've been WAAAAAAAAY better, instead of using all the strange score/cue music, they should've used a bunch of old dusty 1950's/40's music, even 30's! To signify Eddie being old and dusty, but NOT gone for good. The other way to have made it better, hire Tangerine Dream!! They were HOT then, well, they were hot since the 1970's but in 1986 they had already composed a number of successful film scores (including 2 of my favorites "Thief" and "Near Dark"). Tangerine Dream would've fit perfectly with this film. PERFECTLY. Raging Bull had just the right amount of music, classical mostly. Goodfellas and Casino had a great bunch of classic rock and golden oldies. Departed had a great Irish style soundtrack, plus it had Howard Shore. Taxi Driver had the PHENOMENAL AND GENIUS Bernard Hermann (one of his last soundtracks). The Color Of Money score was bland, dry and out of place.
2: It didn't have very high stakes. That's what kind of bored me. The overall plot was just, lots and lots of pool games, thats it! I never look at my watch with a Scorsese movie, but with this one, I was checking the time at 1 hour in, constant pool shots can only interest me for so long. I think, to make this better, and to make it a true Scorsese film, there should've been a bit more violence. Maybe Vince plays the "wrong" person and gets beaten near to death (more than he did in that ONE little fight scene) maybe someone pulls a gun, maybe someone robs them on the road when they pull out the fat wad of money, maybe Vince has a problem with coke, since it was the 80's and they did mention coke in the movie, maybe Vince's girl gets taken by someone and raped, maybe Eddie leaves them and never returns for them, then they have to struggle to survive and travel back home. I just would've added in a little more drama, to make things more interesting.
3: I know this is nitpicking, but the font in the opening credits, looked like a 5 year old wrote it. I think a cooler opening credits sequence could be this: A birds-eye-view of the pool table, every time a pool ball rolled by/through the shot, a credit would appear in the balls trail, in plain, bold, GREEN font. The movie is called "Color Of Money" and the font is red? Seems like a no-brainer to make it green.
Overall, I liked the movie, but I wanted to LOVE it. The score, and the simple plot is what keeps this from being a TRUE gem. If they released a new version with a better soundtrack overlaid (with Martin's permission of course) I would gladly purchase it.