Rain Man Not Credible, Not a Classic and Should Not Have Won the Oscar - Essay Example

Rain Man – Not Credible, Not a ic and Should Not Have Won the Oscar In the movie Rain Man, Tom Cruise played a character who is typical for theactor – at first, he is a cocky guy who does not care for anybody. By the end, he is transformed by some event. The problem is, what the event was in this movie was unclear. As noted, Tom Cruise’s characters always have a change of heart by the end of their movie. Whether the change of heart comes from serving in Vietnam (Born on the Fourth of July), or by losing somebody he loves (Jerry Maguire), or by dying but not knowing that he is dead (Vanilla Sky), there is a transformation from cocky to sensitive.

As Charlie Babbitt, the transformation is complete in this movie, but what precipitated it? Nothing in particular, and this was the tremendous flaw in the movie itself. When we first meet Charlie, he is involved in exotic cars and has a kind girlfriend. Told that his father died, he reacts in a way that tells the audience all that they need to know about Charlie – his facial expression does not change, and he coldly asks the caller if there is anything else. At this point, it might be surmised that this is one cold fish.

He obviously hates his father, and he explains later why he hates his father, and this story does not put him in a good light, either. According to him, he hates his father because he “borrowed” the father’s car, after the father explicitly told him that he could not borrow the car, and the father called the car in as stolen. Charlie went to jail for one entire weekend, and left home after that, refusing all of his father’s efforts to contact him. Right then, and when it became clear that the father had tried to contact Charlie for years, the audience knows that Charlie is not only arrogant and cold, but also a spoiled brat.

Charlie did not get his way on the car, and that was cause enough for Charlie to reject his father throughout the rest of the father’s life. It should have come as no surprise to Charlie or anybody else that the father would cut Charlie substantially out of the will. However, this does come as a surprise to Charlie, and it makes him very angry as well. This, too, shows Charlie for who he is – instead of being apologetic about treating his father in such a way, and realizing that he did not deserve an inheritance, Charlie never does feel bad about treating his father in this manner, and felt that he did, in fact, deserve an inheritance.

He told the caretaker for Raymond as much – that he was kidnapping Raymond because he had to use him as leverage, so that he could get the inherit that he felt that he was entitled to. All of this made his girlfriend realize the kind of person that Charlie was, and this causes her to leave. Meanwhile, Charlie meets Raymond. At first, Raymond drives Charlie crazy, although Charlie is very impressed with Raymond’s abilities. Nevertheless, Charlie constantly berates Raymond, as when Raymond refuses to fly because every airline out of America had a crash, and Raymond knew just when each crash occurred.

This goes on through at least half the film, with Charlie yelling at Raymond, and Raymond going about his business. Charlie had no patience. However, Charlie had no compunctions about using Raymond when it was convenient. He did this by taking Raymond to Vegas and using his card counting abilities to his advantage. There was a major problem with this scene, however. Number one, it is unclear how Raymond helped. It would seem that he would not be able to comprehend the rules of blackjack, as he could not comprehend money in general, and it would seem that it would be impossible for Raymond to understand that he was not to say out loud which cards might be coming.

Instead, it showed Raymond staring at the cards, and Charlie somehow winning, even though Raymond is not really playing and Raymond is not giving Charlie obvious answers about the cards. The transformation apparently comes when Charlie realized that Raymond was the Rain Man of Charlie’s imagination. He also realized that Raymond was sent away because he accidentally scalded baby Charlie with water. This appears to be the turning point when Charlie starts to soften. His girlfriend returns, which also helps his mood.

By the end of the film, Charlie actually starts to care for Raymond, as evidenced by his walking away from $250,000, and the fact that he no longer cared about the inheritance, but that he just wanted Raymond as his brother and that was the reason why he wanted custody of Raymond. In my view, this movie was not believable and did not give a good explanation for why Charlie transformed. Charlie was an angry bastard at the beginning of the film, and it would take a lot more than Charlie finding out that Raymond was Rain Man to change this.

He was also very impatient. The audience knows that Charlie was a spoiled brat, as he hates his father for doing what any other father would, and that is to call the police when the son takes the car without permission. Charlie never regrets treating his father in this way. In short, it seemed that Charlie was without feeling or conscience, therefore it is not believable that he could change to completely in the course of one road trip. For this reason, it should not have won the Academy Award for best picture, because the hero transformation was not obvious, and it was not really explained how or why he changed.

For this same reason, the movie probably will not be considered a classic one day, and it has, in fact, already been mostly forgotten. It does not show up on critic’s best movies of all times list, and this is probably because many critics probably felt that the movie was manipulative, exploitive of autism, and not credible or believable.