Rating:

Originally published November 4, 1983

In All the Right Moves , cinematographer Michael Chapman has chosen to run through a minefield of potential cliches created by the themes of coming-of- age and sports. He makes no serious wrong moves, and his directing debut is easily the best film about teens and their problems this year.

Given the slew of dirty-young-man movies that overwhelmed our theaters this summer, this may qualify as damning with faint praise. All the Right Moves deserves more than that, just as it merits attention beyond the youth market at which it is primarily aimed. Set in a dying steel town where hope and aspiration disappear more quickly than the jobs at the mill, All the Right Moves serves up a grimy dose of realism about some of the genuine concerns of growing up. The dirt here is the real thing, and it's a refreshing change from the assembly-line dirtiness of Hollywood.

The locker room replaces locker-room humor, but All the Right Moves is not a simple-minded jock movie. Through the straightforward story of a high school athlete's efforts to escape a life of drudgery in the steel mill by winning a football scholarship, Chapman and his excellent scenarist, Michael Kane, offer some keen insights without breaking new ground.

To its credit, All the Right Moves does not trot out sports as a metaphor for life. Rather, it is treated as a means to an end and raises the question of both the price such young men pay to win a place in college and the validity of the athletic scholarship system itself. The film's only serious misstep lies in its insistence that sports offers the only avenue of escape.

The movie announces its higher goals by disdaining the Rocky road in which a man climbs up from bumhood and proves himself in a climactic contest. The big game takes place early in All the Right Moves and its function is to set up the key confrontation in the film between the athlete and his driven coach.

All the Right Moves is a very good discussion of the fanaticism that surrounds high school football in small towns. Last Sunday's New York Times Magazine recounted the state of the sport in Texas and cited a coach who had to wear a bulletproof vest on the sidelines because his team was mired in a losing streak. The same, if less drastic, passion governs the town where Stef (Tom Cruise) is trying to earn a ticket to the middle class.

His coach (an invigorating performance from Craig T. Nelson) is consumed by his own ambition to move up to the college ranks. Convinced that Stef has a bad attitude, he sabotages him with visiting recruiters. All the Right Moves is an absorbing study of a social order that does not permit communication. The film carefully calibrates the growing distance between the coach and his charge.

These concerns are framed in a glum depiction of entrapment. Stef's girlfriend is equally impassioned about getting out and going to college to study and play music. But she can't play linebacker and sees herself pulling a life sentence as a supermarket clerk. Stef's brother and father face the prospect of being laid off and trying to get by with working skills that have no place in the world.

In Risky Business, the slick and sleazy hit comedy, Cruise had the thankless task of trying to be a "good" pimp. Stef is a more interesting and challenging role because he undergoes some painful transitions. Ultimately, Stef realizes that he has thought of no one but himself, and comes to terms with the flaws in his character. It's a lesson that bears relearning throughout life and it is persuasively given here.