Two years before Rain Man came out, Cruise starred alongside Paul Newman in The Color of Money, and was ceremoniously outclassed by a more experienced movie star capable of showing more depth, personality and character.

Rain Man is strikingly similar in some ways. It’s another Tom Cruise movie that deals closely with the relationship between money and other pursuits. It’s another “actor showcase” which mostly features Cruise and another movie star talking to each other and encountering a variety of situations. It is also, like The Color of Money, a road movie, the plot of which primarily features the two characters trying to get from one place to another.

Rain Man cleaned up at the Oscars. Dustin Hoffman won the Best Actor award. Barry Levinson won Best Director. Ronald Bass and Barry Morrow won Best Original Screenplay. And the film won Best Picture.

Do you notice someone missing from all of this?

I’ll let you in on a secret: Tom Cruise is better than Dustin Hoffman in this movie. Which isn’t to say Dustin Hoffman is bad. He just doesn’t have much to do. His character (Raymond) mostly just says “definitely” a lot and occasionally freaks out and punches himself in the face. Hoffman portrays this expertly. He changes his walk and his voice and believably pivots between stoic and psychotic. But I think the problem with actor recognition is that while it is entertaining and impressive to see an actor transform, the degree of difficulty is much higher for Cruise’s character, Charlie Babbit.

You see, Raymond has built-in credibility and sympathy. The audience can’t help but pity him, and because they can’t relate to what he’s going through, they aren’t in any position to criticize Hoffman’s performance. I’m sure that there are people like Raymond in real life, but I have no idea if the performance is authentic, in the same way that I can’t criticize the performance of Stephanie Corneliussen on Mr. Robot because she delivers most of her lines in Swedish.

However, I can relate to Charlie, who has to show us from the beginning of the film that he is a selfish asshole, and slowly win our trust and sympathy to the point that we want him to stay with Raymond at the end of the story instead of letting him go back to an institution where he would clearly be better off.

This is Cruise’s best performance so far, and I don’t think it’s close. He gets to do Tom Cruise stuff like stomp away from his father’s Buick with his arms flailing in frustration, and flash his winning smile to get the attention of a dowdy bank clerk. But he also has surprisingly subtle moments, like during a hearing near the end of the story where the doctors are trying to ascertain whether Raymond wants to stay with Charlie or not. You just see Cruise in the background, and his eyes show true triumph, then disappointment, without a grin or a flail.

A good comparison, I think, is The Dark Knight, which got a lot of attention for Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker. Ledger is great in the movie, but again it’s mostly for changing his voice and his gait, whereas I think Gary Oldman’s performance is a lot more subtle and affecting.

Cruise has taken on an “apprentice” role a few times in his career – definitely, starring alongside Dustin Hoffman was an opportunity for him to take a role where he knew he would not be the showcase star, but to up his profile and show that he could star in “serious cinema.” His career for the next few years, working with Oliver Stone, Tony Scott, Ron Howard, and Rob Reiner, Robert Duvall, and Jack Nicholson, shows careful career planning as well as a desire to be considered a serious artist.

I’m not in love with the movie, though it was more lighthearted than I thought it would be. There is a lot of poetry in the script which plays a lot with the idea of communication between people who don’t fully understand each other, and isn’t afraid to make fun of Raymond. Barry Levinson also directed Wag the Dog, Bandits, Good Morning Vietnam, and the Natural, and is an underrated purveyor of late 80s / early 90s dramedies.

In the end, though, Rain Man is sort of what you expect.

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