DVD Reviews: All the Right Moves

All the right moves, I think not.  The only thing that Tom Cruise seems to do in this movie is all the wrong moves.  A fantastically talented football player who’s only real chance of getting out of an American back water town is to get a football scholarship, his chances are real, his talent is real, and the only problem is that he couldn’t care less about football.  He’s only doing it to get out of a one company town, get to college and become an engineer, in it for the scholarship.  

The story follows a team of high school footballers, all of which are really talented, every team member can’t wait to get out of the town.  The town has only about two or three major places to works, all of which suck.  If any sane person has a way out by god you take it.   The town members have missed their chance and these high school kids are going to do their best not to miss theirs.   

The entire town hasn’t much to hold onto.  They live to work, they can’t work to live, because the town is so desperate for something to believe in and follow the high school football team fits the bill perfectly.  The high school football team hasn’t beaten the big city team in something like eight years and by the way things are shaping up this year could be their chance.  The town members are all psyched up for the game and everyone thinks that they’re going to win, a lot of pressure for the young jocks. 

Alas the team super hero finds the nerve to tell the coach how to run the team and in no fault of his own is drawn into a rampage of destruction, with the local hoons who he was just trying to get a lift home with, but the house that was vandalized was in fact the coach’s, he was not impressed.  With the pending explanation of his actions the young star finds that no college in America will touch him, now why could this be?  The coach holds one hell of grudge against the young hitter and finds time in his busy schedule to destroy any chance of him getting a place in any college.   

Now that the young star is out in the cold with only the Steel mill to go to his life isn’t looking so great.  The story has many twists and turns, with an entire team of talented athletes they all can’t get of this stinkin’ town, only a few can escape.   

The movie has a very 80’s feel to it and with Tom Cruise being so young he still hasn’t honed his acting skills quite yet.   The sound and picture quality is also very recognizable as 1980 style, the quality has a home video type feel and the sound clarity reflects that.  There unfortunately aren’t too many extras, well in actual fact there’s only one, the original trailer, I seem to be finding that the older, older movies I review have historical and interesting extras where as the newer movies have all sorts of technical feats being explained, but I seems to me that the movies that come to me from that era have next to nothing, I feel a great pit of sorrow for the pour shlub that has to figure out what sort of extras they have to include in these movie cos the ones from the 1980’s ain’t got much to offer.