My month long Martin Scorsese marathon: The Color of Money

Nowadays, "two decades later" sequels are all the rage (Tron Legacy, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Rambo, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). But in 1986, they were a bit of novelty. It's a bit comforting to know that while we in the present are experiencing some eighties nostalgia, people in the eighties were going through sixties nostalgia.

Color of Money exists, let's face it, so Scorsese could hammer out an easy hit to gain some pull to make Last Temptation of Christ. As an added bonus, it got Paul Newman his first ever oscar. Some say it was just one of those "Lifetime Achievement Oscars", and the Academy didn't really care about his performance in this. But I think Newman was just stellar here. Paul Newman is an actor who got better with age. His voice had more of a gravelly edge to it, and he still retained his charm and good looks but gained wisdom and world weariness.

Color of Money follows a typical sports movie plot, then suddenly in the last thirty minutes or so Paul Newman gets hustled and goes into a brief depression before bouncing back and winding up at the big tournament where he faces off against his protege. But the protege's loss was just a hustle and we never find out who was the better pool player (my money was on Tom Cruise, though). The whole plot is very "meh", and I personally don't find pool to be a very epic topic for a movie. I also didn't think The Hustler was so great that it needed a "two decades later" sequel. But it's never boring (well, occasionally it is) and the music was great. And it has Scorsese written all over it, as he's perfecting that hyper-active style that led to Goodfellas here.