All the Right Moves

"All I have to do is maintain my fantastic 2.0 grade-point average and everything is cool."
Because "Risky Business" gets all the attention for being Tom Cruise's breakout film, Michael Chapman's "All the Right Moves" has often been unfairly overlooked or just outright forgotten. That is a shame because Cruise's "other" coming-of-age film is a highly entertaining effort that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as his more high profile projects.

Cruise plays Stefan Djordjevic, a high school football player who dreams of being awarded a college scholarship in order to escape a future in the steel mills. However, Stefan's short temper often gets the best of him and his relationship with his high school coach (Craig T. Nelson) becomes strained after he participates in an incident that leaves the coach's house vandalized. With the help of his high school sweetheart, Lisa (Lea Thompson), Stefan starts to get his act together and ultimately gets his life back on track.

"All the Right Moves" proves that Tom Cruise had tremendous screen presence from...

The best of the 4....
Tom Cruise was a busy man in 1983. With the success of Taps 2 years earlier, he took a year off, then came out with 4 movies in the next year. They was Risky Business, The Outsiders, Losin It and All the Right Moves. My fav of all those was All the Right moves.

Cruise plays Stefan, a kid who plays for the Ampipe HS football team as a cornerback, in backwoods Pennsylvania. It is a one industry (steel) town and if the kids can't get away from there, they usually end up in the steelworks. Cruise doesn't want to work there. He has higher goals of being an Engineer. And football is the only way out, and a few schools have offered him a full scholarship.

His girlfriend is played by Lea Thompson, and she is a smart, insecure girl who is also talented in music, but trapped because schools don't give scholarships to music students who aren't brillant. There is always a hint of jealousy in her mannerisms as she watches the "dumb jocks" ride to the schools that...

All the right moves
Sent the movie to a grandson. He needed to see the message in this movie.

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