All the Right Moves (1983)

Directed by: Michael Chapman | 91 minutes | drama, romance, sports | Actors: Tom Cruise, Craig T. Nelson, Lea Thompson, Charles Cioffi, Gary Graham, Paul Carafotes, Chris Penn, Sandy Faison, James A. Baffico, Mel Winkler, Walter Briggs, George Betor, Leon Robinson, Jonas Chaka, Keith Diamond

‘All the Right Moves’ is a sympathetic and typically American sports film, about an ambitious and poor high school student and the coach of his team who both want to escape from the poor steel town of Ampipe where they come from.

The lead is for a young Tom Cruise as Stefen Djordjevic, who sees a frightening future looming before him: to work in the steel mill, just like his father and brother – in a desolate Pennsylvania town. It is the only job he will be able to get, the only alternative is unemployment. His only chance of escape is his talent on the football field. Stef, as he is called, is a “cornerback”, a position on the defensive team in American Football, which requires you to be fast and agile to intercept passes, for example. In Cruise’s case a striking casting, because not only are the cornerbacks usually the smallest players on the field, but also because he can play a raised, driven tough boy like no other. Once he broke through to the public eye, he would play similar roles more often, in films like ‘Top Gun’, ‘Cocktail’ and ‘Rain Man’ – to name a few. Yet there is also something vulnerable and sensitive about Stef in his portrayal in ‘All the Right Moves’. After all, he’s just an ordinary teenager, full of the same insecurities – though he doesn’t have to worry much about love. He has a steady girlfriend Lisa (Lea Thompson), who supports him unconditionally and tries to help him along.

Stef is critical to his team, led by gruff coach Nickerson (Craig T. Nelson). The coach – who is also a regular (typing) teacher at the school – also dreams of leaving as soon as possible, preferably as a trainer for a university team. Nelson is a great opponent for Cruise: just as arrogant and with the same hidden insecurities. A few years later, Nelson would also take on a role as a football coach in the long-running TV series ‘Coach’, which ran in the US from 1989 to 1997. Here he takes an advance, with an authoritarian, but not entirely unsympathetic role. Nelson keeps it convincing, because the screenplay also gives him human sides and his ambitions are not difficult to understand.

In one of the most important supporting roles, Chris Penn, who died far too young, can be seen as Stef’s teammate Brian. Penn is almost unrecognizable with his beardless teenage face, which makes it all the more striking by comparison how little Cruise has aged in all those years. In addition to the relationship between player and coach, the film mainly focuses on high school students, who mainly want to party, drink, eat and look forward to the next game. After all, their future doesn’t look too bright. Regardless of the title (what does it mean, for example in the context of the film?), the makers have taken a smart approach: it never gets flat, the actors keep it alive and the film has surprisingly few clichés that you encounter in so many sports films. All in all, it offers a realistic portrait of the poor, young underclass in a bleeding industrial town. That is not to say that the film completely escapes stereotypes.

‘All the Right Moves’ is well directed by the debutant Michael Chapman, in one of the very few prints that he would put to his name. Chapman is best known as a cinematographer, for which Jan de Bont is responsible for one of his first American films. The Bonts visual style is not really visible here yet, which could indicate that Chapman himself has kept a firm finger in the pie while spinning.