Cruise is a 2018 drama set in the 1980s, where a young Italian-American from the “wrong side of the tracks” falls for a Jewish girl from Long Island.
It’s immediately apparent that Cruise director Robert Siegel understands the 80s, even if he turns it all up just a (big) hair over ten. This is a film seeped in the nostalgia of the era, dressed up in fantasy rather than reality, making it all feel very familiar yet sort of slightly askew. It’s like a cross between American Graffiti and Fast & Furious if both were made while Miami Vice was most popular. For that, it works well, amusingly so, though it’s all too familiar with hardly any innovation to make it matter. Sassy and sexy, yes, but not much else.
It’s 1987 in Queens, New York, and good-looking Italian American party boy Gio Fortunato (Spencer Boldman) spends his free time getting into trouble, drag racing with his friends or worse, stealing cars and radios. Clean cut and movie-poster hot, he soon meets the lovely Jessica Weinberg (Emily Ratajkowski), a bad girl by night and good girl by day, falling instantly in love with her. Naturally, classes clash and the Romeo & Juliet-ness of the pair threaten to tear them apart, though by summer’s end, she’s destined to return to university and leave it all behind anyway. Can the two find a way to stay together?
Adrift in classic tunes of the era, there’s no taking away the hard edge style Siegel layers into this film, the bold colors and gleamy throwback sheen doing loads to sell the times, even if they are just a shade away from cartoony. I give credit to Siegel and especially Fortunato for committing to such a character and generally making it work, the 50s attitude and skyhigh pompadour rigged for smirkes even as he totally sells it. Kudos to Ratajkowski as well, for doing what she can with the dual-ish role, clearly having some fun with the fashion and fads.
Still, despite some nods to the genre and a flair for the melodramas that paved the way, the movie ultimately lacks any punch. Siegel, who earned well-deserved praise for his screenwriting credits to The Wrestler and The Founder, understands the times and even the motivations in Cruise, but dresses it all up in style and keeps in the corner. The leads are plenty sexy and the movie throws some genuine steam at the screen, but we never really get all that invested in the couple, the movie playing more like a jukebox fantasy than anything with grit.
There’s a lot to like about Cruise, with its straightforward attempts to play with some conventions of popular 80s comeback titles, though it never swims too far from shore, leaving this all-too-predictable little story a paint by numbers with neon colors. Surely, many might find some fun peering through rose-colored glasses, and it’s hard not to get stirred up by the chemistry of the leads, yet this will no doubt be nothing but filler.