![]() One thing leads to another and Flanagan lands in Jamaica, where he meets Elisabeth Shue’s Jordan Mooney, and, after breaking her heart, heads back to New York where Coughlin takes his own life. Archive Photos // Getty Imagesīartending, it turns out, suits Flanagan, and he quickly becomes locally famous for a routine with Coughlin that involves tossing bottles in the air. ![]() Tom Cruise as Brian Flanagan and Bryan Brown as Doug Coughlin in a scene from Cocktail. But in Flanagan’s case, no one is biting, so he ends up at a TGI Friday’s, where Doug Coughlin, played by Bryan Brown, gives him a job despite having never tended bar. This was a common trope in the ‘80s: If you’re a white guy, you don’t necessarily need a college degree or even experience to land a cushy corporate job. Here’s the plot of Cocktail: Tom Cruise’s character, Brian Flanagan, returns home to New York from the military in search of an executive-level job. During our conversation, Gould dropped a bombshell: The 76-year-old is working on a sequel. He responded promptly, and one afternoon I spent an hour talking to the guy who wrote Cocktail about the movie’s plot, his reaction to its sour reception in 1988, Tom Cruise, and where the characters might be today. Elisabeth Shue, no surprise, is an absolute breath of fresh air.Īnd so last summer, I emailed Heywood Gould, who wrote both the movie and the novel upon which it’s based, asking to chat. (In fact, there’s some Brian Flanagan in Jerry.) Plus, Bryan Brown, who plays Cruise's mentor in the film, is so good they could've just made the movie about him. Tom Cruise remains the most exuberant actor on the screen, and in Cocktail he’s at his second-most exuberant, behind only Jerry Maguire. Mondadori Portfolio // Getty Imagesīut I love the movie. The screenplay for Cocktail was revised to make Tom Cruise’s character more likeable, according to the writer. There’s a very angry father who appears in a third act that wraps up way too quickly. Cruise’s character is a working-class guy from Queens, who’s striving to become an '80s era yuppie, yet he settles for a relatively quiet life owning a small bar and raising a family-an enormous shift his character makes in a few minutes. It takes place in three acts, across New York and Jamaica. In case you haven’t seen Cocktail, or haven’t seen it in a while, you should know it’s kind of insane. ![]() Matthew Rhys, the star of The Americans, also told me, possibly half-joking, that Cocktail is an all-time favorite. The producer of one of this year’s buzzy award-nominated films told me members of his social circle spent the weekend Cocktail hit Netflix last spring watching the movie and exchanging messages about it. Some of which you might even call admirers of the film. Over the years, the movie has maintained a loyal audience, including in Hollywood. No one is saying: Actually, it was ahead of it's time. In the 30 years since its theatrical release, Cocktail has not earned a reappraisal from critics. The movie earned a stunning $171.5 million worldwide, but joined the canon of Minor Cruise films. “The more you think about what really happens in Cocktail,” Roger Ebert wrote at the time, “the more you realize how empty and fabricated it really is.” For the role of Brian Flanagan, Cruise got a Worst Actor Razzie. The bartender drama, which came out in 1988, has a 5 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, making it Cruise’s lowest-rated movie on the site. But smack in the middle of that run was one major stinker: Cocktail. Tom Cruise’s first and greatest hot streak as an actor lasted from 1986 to 1990, starting with Top Gun, followed by The Color of Money, Rain Man, Born on the Fourth of July, which got him his first Best Actor nomination, and Days of Thunder.
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