Rain Man

Rain Man
1988

I am completely speechless. Err, I mean wordless. Never has a movie impressed me so much before. I have seen, many, many movies over my sixteen years on this planet, and I don’t know if I’ve ever been rendered speechless before because of one. This was just, so good.

Charlie is a complete jerk and is only focused on himself. And then his father dies, leaving him with none of the three million dollar fortune he left behind. He gave it all to his brother Raymond, a brother he didn’t even know he had. An autistic one to boot.

Charlie learns that whoever holds custody over Raymond is the one who gets the money. So Charlie of course does the rational thing and kidnaps him. It’s not exactly kidnapping as Raymond technically came willingly, but yeah. Anyway. They are in Cincinnati. They need to be in LA because Charlie has scheduled a court hearing for custody. So a plane would be a good idea right?

Wrong. Raymond freaks out because he can remember that every single airline had a crash. He can even remember the exact date. It’s quite remarkable in fact. But anyway they cannot ride the plane because Raymond refuses. So it’s a road trip for them!

But now, they cannot ride on the highway. That’s not safe either. It’s off to the side roads! This is pissing Charlie off quite a bit. I am sure you would be irked if this was happening to you.

As they truck along, Charlie begins to notice Raymond’s amazing math abilities, like he can times 314 and 5432 and get it right or something like that. He also can just look down at something and know immediately how many of those objects are on the ground. Like that there were exactly 246 toothpicks on the ground. So if you had a brother like this, what would you do? Take him to Las Vegas and win 86,000 dollars of course! Which is what they do. Yay them! We will ignore that counting cards is usually frowned upon because in this case it’s flipping awesome.

By now we have noticed a change in Charlie. He has started to learn to bend to meet his brother’s crazy requests and has undergone a change of attitude through that. In Vegas, Raymond asks his brother to teach him to dance and when he agrees we see a new Charlie.

But we still have this court thing to deal with. They have a doctor meeting to see which the doctor will recommend for Raymond, going back with his old doctor and living in the institution or living with his new brother. After a series of questions to them both, Charlie steps in and makes the decision.

The next scene is at a train station where the brothers part, but only for two weeks, the new less self absorbed Charlie promises. With that Raymond gets on the train and the movie is over.

This movie was phenomenal. I have never seen a better acting job then the one given to us by Dustin Hoffman, who played Raymond. I cannot even describe it. Words would not give him justice, but he was convincing without going over the top, a hard thing to do. Tom Cruise also was very good playing the character of Charlie. And he was also really really cute twenty years ago, so it was an added bonus! I felt that the movie drew you in and actually made you care what was going to happen to the brothers in the end. The story itself was just fascinating. I just loved this movie. It is one I am very glad to have discovered on my trip with the Oscars.