All the Right Moves, a middling, cliché-ridden small-town saga featured Tom Cruise in a lead role just before he became a box-office star.
Grade: C+ (**1/2* out of *****)
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Theatrical release poster
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Cruise plays high-school football star Stef Djordjevic, a restless youngster who yearns to escape his stifling mill town existence through a sports scholarship, but he runs afoul of the tough coach Vern Nickerson (Craig Nelson).
Scripted by Michael Kane, All the Right Moves announced the feature directorial debut of brilliant cinematographer Michael Chapman, who had shot, among other films, Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.
Though shot on location, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where regional coach Donald A. Yanessa acted as the production technical adviser (and also appears as an opposing coach), but authenticity of location can’t compensate for the safe narrative and its familiar Horatio Alger story.
My Book:
Hard on the edged but soft (and a bit sentimental) at the center, “All the Right Moves” was an old-fashioned fable about ambition and will power, set against a backdrop of a small stifling town.
Highly compromised, the picture wants to have it both ways, underline the precarious economic conditions, the limited career options, the life-sapping work and yet show in a fake happy ending (that negates most of what precedes it) a more optimistic outlook to the point where the characters become vessel of ideas rather than full-fleshed individuals.
Happy Ending (Compromised)
Frustrated by what Nickerson did, Stefen angrily confronts his former coach which ends in a shouting match out in the street. Lisa decides to talk to Nickerson’s wife to try to help. Nickerson realizes he was wrong in blackballing Stefen. He has accepted coaching position on the West Coast at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and offers Stefen a full scholarship to play football there, which he accepts.
The love interest is modestly played by the charming Lea Thompson, as Lisa Lietski; there’s nice chemistry between her and Cruise.
Made on a modest budget, the film was a moderate success.
Cruise plays a working-class version of his yuppie Chicago protagonist in the comedy Risky Business, a much better film. That 1983 movie catapulted him to major stardom, a status that would be cemented and reaffirmed in Tony Scott’s smash hit, Top Gun (1986).
Cast
Tom Cruise as Stefen Djordjevic
Craig T. Nelson as Coach Vern Nickerson
Lea Thompson as Lisa Lietzke
Charles Cioffi as Pop
Gary Graham as Greg Djordjevic
Paul Carafotes as Vinnie Salvucci
Chris Penn as Brian Riley
Leon as Austin “Shadow” Williams
Credits:
Directed by Michael Chapman
Written by Michael Kane
Produced by Stephen Deutsch
Cinematography Jan de Bont
Edited by David Garfield
Music by David Richard Campbell
Production company: Lucille Ball Productions
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release date: October 21, 1983
Running time: 91 minutes
Budget $5.6 million
Box office $17.2 million
