Cocktail – A Sincerely Crazy Cruise Film

Let me just get one thing straight and pardon my profanity; but Cocktail f*cking rules! But it also sucks. When it rules, it rules to no end and can go up against any feel-good 80’s film. But when it sucks, it sucks something rotten. Sometimes it’s the downfalls of the film that make it so enjoyable, but sometimes it just leaves you with a ten minute sequence where you’re bored sh*tless. I mean you know what you’re getting in for with these two taglines...

“They thought he was good, they were wrong... he was the best”. 

Which is good, but absolute nothing compared to this absolute beauty of marketing...

“When he pours, he reigns”.

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Which for me is really up there in the all-time tagline rankings. So let’s start talking about the actual film that it was selling, despite the fact that in many ways, it sells itself. Let’s start with Cruise, the film’s lead as Brian Flanagan, a very talented New York City bartender who finds love in Jamaica and finds that love again upon return to the big apple. Cruise was red-hot, this was five years after Risky Business, two years after the 1986 double whammy of Top Gun and The Colour of Money, leading us into another double whammy in 1988, with his impeccable and I feel very underrated turn in Rain Man, aswell as Cocktail the same year. Cruise is incredible when it comes to double whammy’s too, with 1996’s Mission Impossible and Jerry Maguire still to come, and 1999’s Eyes Wide Shut and Magnolia even further still to come. For me Cruise is just an all-timer, starring in some of my favourite films in multiple different worlds – art house dramatic human pieces, rollicking comedic romances and some of the best action of the past 50 years. Cocktail catches Cruise at a time of pure heat, giving us everything that we want from a younger Cruise film role – He’s sexy, his energy is boundless and infectious, he’s effortlessly charismatic, you can believe that he can get any woman he wants (a scenario that’s credulity has stretched a little far I feel in his later films). Cruise is perfect as Brian Flanagan and in many ways it is his powerful charisma that leads you to throw caution to the wind and go along with this genuinely crazy film that features two extended scenes of him delivering rather lengthy limerick-esque poems stood atop a bar with literally a hundred people each time absolutely enthralled.

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The film comes from a script by Heywood Gould, from his own novel. Gould has written only one other watchable film with 1978’s similarly batsh*t Nazi cloning movie The Boys From Brazil. Directing the film is Rogan Donaldson, hot off his Costner and Hackman hit thriller No Way Out, a really underrated film in my eyes with one of the great forgotten twists of the decade. This collaboration births an odd mix of a fun and jolly film, paired with very heady themes ultimately leading to a third act based around suicidal depression. You leave the movie wondering what the message was supposed to be. By all counts the message is to stay a bartender, but really the message is that money isn’t everything. Which is a nice message and I’m not saying that the film is life-affirming nor is it any sort of modern day It’s a Wonderful Life with a Jamaica sequence, but it’s still a nice ending. But you’re not watching it for any of that, you’re watching it for Cruise and Bryan Brown cocktail mixing synchronised to Hippy Hippy shake. Now that we’ve brought him up, let’s talk about Bryan Brown who steals the show as Doug Coughlin, a philosophy spouting drunken depressed Australian who is by far the most entertaining character in the film and also the most unhinged. Proving to Cruise early on in the film that his then girlfriend will cheat on him, by having sex with her himself, ultimately proving his point to Cruise but going about it a slightly nefarious way. Brown teaches Cruise all he knows in the best part of the film, it’s first forty minutes, these high octane bar scenes are some of the most fun sequences of the 80’s. All set to classic tracks, with the soundtrack just being hit after hit. The ultimate standout being the Beach boys belter Kokomo. But Addicted to love and When will I be loved make for a nice second place tie.

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 The women in Flanagan’s life come and go, at a rather rapid speed in actuality. With Gina Gershon coming into the film showing up for a flirtatious bar exchange, a sex montage, a business proposition and getting out of the film almost as quick. Kelly Lynch stars as Kerry Coughlin who feels like a remnant of an earlier script draft, in this final film she still gets one kiss in but she’s more of an afterthought. Lisa Barnes is great fun as the very odd turn in the second act of the film where Flanagan becomes a kept man for a wealthy older woman, in the vein of Norma Desmond and Joe Gillis. The sequence is enjoyable still, but as more of a laughing at it section. But the one woman in Flanagan’s life who he always comes back to, despite the fact that they only knew each other about five days and despite the fact that they argue every time they meet and despite the fact that he threw her off to win a bet and despite the fact that her father offers to pay him just short of $30,000 to keep him away from her... Let me catch my breath... This woman is Jordan played by the ever-beautiful and ever-sweet Elisabeth Shue. Shafted as the 2^nd Jennifer in the Back to the Future series, Shue has given us many other great roles, such as Oscar nominated performance in Leaving Las Vegas and her underrated comedic turn as herself in Hamlet 2. Much like the rest of the plot elements in the film, this romance similarly feels like a less fleshed out version of something that was the entire basis of an earlier draft. As a matter of fact Heywood Gould has commented many times how over the course of the a few years there was approximately "40 drafts of the script". But ultimately it’s that messiness that makes the film watchable and if I want impeccable craft than I will re-watch 45 years, but if I want impeccable depictions of a mixologists craft than I know where to turn to. There’s one place that will serve me well and that place is called ‘Flanagan’s cocktails and dreams’.

Now I’m by no means saying that this film is a masterpiece, as a matter of fact I feel the most apt title for the film lies within “The official Razzie movie guide”, which positions it in its 100 most enjoyably bad movies ever made. Look if you haven’t seen this absolute gem, then treat yourself and give it a screening straight away, cause ladies and gentlemen... “The bar is open”!

- Thomas Carruthers