All the Right Moves *** (1983, Tom Cruise, Craig T Nelson, Lea Thompson) – Classic Movie Review 1522

Director Michael Chapman’s sensitive 1983 sports and coming-of-age drama All the Right Moves provides an engaging early vehicle for Tom Cruise.

The megastar-to-be is on compelling and convincing form as Stefen Djordjevic, an eager and stubborn small-town Pennsylvania football star who clashes with his forceful high school coach, Nickerson (Craig T Nelson), makes love to co-ed Lisa (Lea Thompson) and enjoys an unexpectedly good relationship with his father (Charles Cioffi).

Stefen is desperate for a football scholarship to get out of his dying Western Pennsylvania steel town. But his coach’s ambitions for a college position put the two men on a collision course and could put a spanner in the works of Stefen’s hopes.

The movie is sincere, earnest and credibly low key, but the four stars all make all the right moves. Cruise and Nelson are ideal and especially effective. Director Chapman conveys perfectly the claustrophobic dead-end atmosphere of decaying industrial Pennsylvania and the fragile nature of the hopes and dreams of youth, as well as the bawdy buddy humour of the locker-room and classroom.

Rather surprisingly, it is made by Lucille Ball Productions, a nice little earner for them, costing $5,600,00 and grossing $17,233,166 in the US.

Michael Kane’s conscientious screenplay is admirable, and cinematographer Jan De Bont (the future director of Speed) is an ace with the images. It was shot in Johnstown, Conemaugh and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Also in the cast are Charles Cioffi, Christopher [Chris] Penn, Paul Carafotes, Sandy Faison, Paige Price, James A Baffico, Mel Winkler, Donald A Yanessa, Walter Briggs, George Betor, Jonas Chaka, Keith Diamond and Leon Robinson.

All the Right Moves is directed by Michael Chapman, runs 91 minutes, is made by Lucille Ball Productions and Twentieth Century Fox, is released by 20th Century Fox, is written by Michael Kane, is shot by Jan De Bont, is produced by Stephen Deutsch, is scored by David Campbell, and is designed by Mary Ann Biddle.

There is the briefest of full frontal nudity as Cruise gets all his kit off to have sex with co-star Lea Thompson, as well as American football and bar violence, and three uses of the F word.

1983 was a busy year for the young, ambitious Cruise. He made four movies in one year, Losin’ It, The Outsiders, Risky Business and this, the fourth one released. It is Cruise’s sixth film, starting with his 1981 debut in Endless Love, followed by Taps.

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