Paul Brickman's 1983
comedy Risky Business has a fair number of iconic scenes—star Tom Cruise
dancing in his underwear, Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay making love "on a real
train," etc.—but the key scene is quieter. After Cruise listens to high-school
friends talk about test scores as a means to getting into the colleges that
will give them the earning power they want, he asks, "Doesn't anyone want to
accomplish anything, or do we just want to make money?" Everyone gives him a
look that suggests he's the only one thinking about anything other than cash.
Then he spends the rest of the film learning what making money's all about.
A coming-of-age film that
turns Cruise's high-school senior into an accidental pimp after he nervously
hires a call girl (De Mornay), Risky Business is partly about how teens
grow up, discover desire, and move past the little-kid images that line their parents'
homes. But the "business" half of the title is just as important. Forced to
embrace his role as a panderer after wrecking his dad's Porsche, Cruise winds
up looking at capitalism at its rawest as he joins De Mornay in the "shameless
pursuit of material gratification." But eventually, the business gets the
better of him, and Cruise is troubled by the suspicion that his relationship
with De Mornay might mean nothing more to her than a dollar amount, since she's
so adept at putting prices on everything else.
Brickman has so far
directed only one other movie—the 1990 drama Men Don't Leave—but he made his
debut count. The unearthly electronic score from Tangerine Dream feeds
perfectly into a mood that's as much contemplative as comic. Risky Business found its audience as
part of a wave of teen comedies, but Cruise's character has more in common with
Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate than any of the Porky's horndogs. As the film
progresses, he clearly realizes his soul is at stake. If audiences in that
material-world decade paid attention, they probably saw a bit of themselves up
there.
Key features: A solid commentary with
Cruise, Brickman, and producer Jon Avnet. But the best feature is Brickman's
original cut, which substantially improves on what made it to theaters.