Twenty-five years after The Hustler, Fast Eddie Felson comes back, and at first he isn’t even playing. Martin Scorsese‘s The Color of Money, released in October 1986, finds Paul Newman‘s Eddie selling liquor in Chicago, comfortable and a little dead behind the eyes. Then he watches a young player named Vincent Lauria (Tom Cruise) outplay Julian at nine-ball, and the old itch returns. Like the 1961 film, this one comes from a novel by Walter Tevis. It is a sequel, not a remake, and that is the best thing about it.

Eddie doesn’t go back to the table. He goes back through somebody else. He offers Vincent and his girlfriend Carmen (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) a partnership: six weeks on the road, a run of pool halls, and a nine-ball tournament in Atlantic City at the end. Eddie takes most of the winnings and eats the losses. In return he wants obedience. He also wants Vincent to learn the hustler’s first lesson, which is to play below his ability so the mark keeps betting. Vincent hates it. He is talented and green, he loves an audience, and he cannot see why anyone would hide what he can do.

That friction carries the film. Newman plays Eddie as a man who has spent years telling himself he was finished with the game, and who lights up when he sees a kid he can shape. The performance won him the Academy Award for Best Actor. What I admire is how little of it is nostalgia. Eddie is not a saint or a wise old master. He manipulates Vincent’s insecurities about Carmen, hands him a valuable cue as bait, and quietly bends the arrangement in his own favor. When he gets fed up with Vincent’s grandstanding at Orvis’s pool hall, he simply leaves. The mentor is as vain as the pupil, only better at hiding it.

Cruise is the perfect foil. His Vincent is all speed and swagger, a showboat who can’t pass up a flourish even when it scares off a wealthier opponent. It’s easy to find him irritating, and the film wants you to, but there is real skill in the way Cruise lets the kid’s charm keep leaking through. Mastrantonio’s Carmen is sharper than either man gives her credit for. She sees her own value in the scheme, reminds Eddie that they are partners with a shared interest in Vincent, and does not pretend to be anyone’s decoration.

The smaller parts are thinner. Helen Shaver’s Janelle, upset by Eddie’s abrupt departure, mostly stays on the edge of the story. John Turturro’s Julian gets a few sharp moments before the plot moves on without him. Forest Whitaker turns up as Amos, the hustler who beats Eddie and humiliates him, and that defeat matters because it sends the older man away from the road and toward the tournament.

The middle stretch drags a little. Pool hall after pool hall, hustle after hustle: the pattern is clear early, and some of the repetition doesn’t earn its length. But the rhythm pays off once the two men stop pretending to be a team. Vincent’s showboating almost wrecks a game he is supposed to throw against Grady Seasons, and watching that near-miss is what pushes Eddie to pick up a cue again.

The ending is more interesting than a simple duel. In Atlantic City Eddie beats Vincent, then learns that Vincent dumped the match on purpose after using the Grady game to lengthen his own odds. Vincent and Carmen hand him $8,000 as his cut. It is meant as a gift and it lands as an insult. In his semifinal Eddie forfeits and gives the money back. He wants to win honestly, on his own terms. The last confrontation is a private match against Vincent, and Eddie announces, “I’m back!”

I won’t pretend this sits at the level of The Hustler, and several critics at the time said as much. It is looser and less bleak. But it has what a good sequel needs, a reason to exist: a man who once lost everything and now has to decide what winning is worth.

Cast

Paul Newman as Eddie Felson — Paul Newman — Eddie Felson

Tom Cruise as Vincent Lauria — Paul Newman — Eddie Felson

Photos: The Movie Database (TMDB)

Tags: dramas, Martin Scorsese, Tom Cruise, Paul Newman, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, The Color of Money

The Color of Money is a looser, warmer sequel, and Newman makes it worth the wait

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