Subtitles:

English (SDH), Spanish, none

Extras:

Martin Scorsese's ''Color of Money'' picks up the character of Fast Eddie Felson 25 years after he walked out of Chalkie's pool hall into the exhausted dawn at the end of Robert Rossen's fine 1961 melodrama, ''The Hustler.'' In the person of Paul Newman, who received an Oscar nomination for his performance in the Rossen film, the former pool-hall hustler has aged with remarkable grace, his physical vitality intact and his view of the world less cynical than barroom-pragmatic.

Today Fast Eddie is a genial, silver-haired liquor salesman, immaculately dressed in the leisure wear that spells ''class'' to his customers. He's a fund of the kind of stories that sound best when told late in the afternoon, over a shot glass of Wild Turkey with beer as a chaser, to whatever bartender is the last of his calls for the day.

Fast Eddie travels light in a big white Cadillac. In fact, he's a modern-day Flying Dutchman, a myth in polyester, doomed to move forever from one barroom to the next, never stopping very long in any one place for fear that his curse will catch up with him.

Oscar-nominated in 1961 for his performance as pool hustler Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler, Paul Newman won that award... a quarter century later when he reprised the role in The Color of Money. At the end of The Hustler, Felson was banned for life from playing the game professionally. In the intervening years, he has become what the despicable George C. Scott was in the 1961 film: a front man for younger hustlers, claiming the lion's share of the winnings. His latest "client" is arrogant young Tom Cruise, who is goaded into accepting Felson's patronage by his avaricious girl friend Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. Cruise learns not only the refinements of the game, but also the dirty trickery that will help him lure in the suckers. As Cruise becomes successful on these terms, Felson seethes with jealousy, hitting the bottle and carelessly allowing himself to fall victim to another hustler. He tells Cruise to get lost, and vows to make an honest comeback. It is inevitable from this point onward that the younger and the older player will square off in a game for the biggest stakes of all: Fast Eddie Felson's self-respect. Both the original Hustler and The Color of Money were based on novels by Walter Tevis.

Gary Tooze

May 31st, 2012