Rating of
3/4
One of the best Tom Cruise movies
TheWolf - wrote on 08/06/07
Tom Cruise before he went out of his gord crazy. This is one of the few Tom Cruise movies that I still respect and enjoy. Cocktail is ultimately the story of Bryan Flanagan's (Tom Cruise) reaction as he doggedly pursues his ambition of getting rich, only to learn that his dream was never really worth pursuing. A new arrival in New York City, the "greatest concentration of wealth in the world," young Flanagan immediately seeks to establish himself in the business world. Without an education or practical experience, however, he suffers one humiliation after another while job-seeking. Eventually he realizes that the business world demands an education, so he enrolls in college and settles for a job as a bartender to pay the bills. But then something extraordinary happens: he discovers that he actually enjoys bartending more than he enjoys college, and that he is challenged more by the mentorship of bartender Doug Coughlin (Bryan Brown) than he is by the tutelage of his bitter, sadistic college professors. Together, Coughlin and Flanagan develop the bartending equivalent of a synchronized swimming routine that delivers them both the recognition and money (in tips) they crave.
When he leaves New York and heads to Jamaica, I was kind of thinking the movie would go downhill, and you do kind of miss New York, in other movies they would keep linking back to New York, but with Brian having no connections with New York (having fallen out with Doug) it would of seemed inappropriate to keep going back there. While in Jamaica he meets Jordan (Elizabeth Shue) an artist that he falls for hard. The rest of the movie is a toss between his job and his love for Jordan. I don't want to give away the whole movie, so I will just leave it at that.
The movie was slain by the reviewers (another reason why I never listen to movie critics) but it was one of the most popular movies of 1988. It also brought about the Beach Boys hit "Kokomo".
If you want to see a "feel good movie" this is one of those that you will probably enjoy.
