Rainman Movie Review Essay, Research Paper
MOVIE REVIEW RAIN MAN
In their first film together, Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman made an unlikely pair work as brothers in the movie Rain Man. Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) owns a car business. The first scene shows that Charlie is vary talkative. He can speaks with such eloquence. He has a beautiful girlfriend called Susanna (Valeria Golina). The conflict all started when he heard about his father s death, who he hadn t spoken for many years. His father had left him a car and a few rose bushes. The rest of the three million dollars went to his unknown, autistic brother, Raymond (Dustin Hoffman). At the beginning, Charles was in madness to get his share of money. But as he spent time with Raymond, he made a connection with him. He discovered that Raymond was not just a original mental patient. He was actually very intelligent. He could count 446 toothpick in a second, but he just couldn t function normally. In reality, situation like Raymond may not happen very often, but with the terrific acting of Dustin, the plot becomed very realistic. How he tiled his head, and repeated himself all the time made his role believable. This could not be done without a good script. Ronald Bass did a very great job on writing the movie. Between showing the development of Charlie from anger to love, he added a little comedy, which made Rain Man even more interesting. One thing I have to mention about this movie are the scenario. The picks of locations and setting are excellent. For example, at the scene where Charlie and Raymond were driving to LA, it showed three shots from morning to night. The contrast between them made me feel involved. The sunset made me feel like it s the end of the day. Then they drove into LA, where lights and people are everywhere. This made me feel like back to life again. However, the music of the movie is very poor. The same soundtrack is play every time they travelled on the cross-country highway. Sometime, the music is too loud, making me not be able to hear the conversation. Otherwise, everything was well put together. One technique was often uses in the movie. Director Barry Levinson loved to still on a location, then people walk in or cars drive through the screen. The three shots of the driving trip I talked about before is done by this. Similarly, the same technique is used when they stop by the store. First, the shot was freeze on the shop, then there were off-screen sound. The car didn t drive in after a while. In addition, the camera angle and camera distance were used sufficiently. For instance, where Charlie was saying goodbye to Raymond on the train, the high and low angle are perfectly used. A low angle was used to show Charlie looking up at Raymond, then a reverse of high angle of Raymond looking at Charlie. This made me feel like part of the action. Before this scene, there was a scene where shows the two brothers walking on the sidewalk. A long shot was used then to show the whole picture of the park, instead of close up. Overall, the 1988 United Artist film produced by Mark Johnson taught me acceptance. Money is not the only important thing in the world.