Risky Business
If you’ve read a lot of my film comments, you might be surprised to learn I have a relatively high regard for Tom Cruise as an actor. For me, he is more than a ‘movie star’ – a personality with screen presence who generally fills the same role in every film. Cruise actually has the ability to play different characters and has been willing to take on roles that are distinct from his core on-screen personality of the genial chancer who eventually lands on his feet. If I have a complaint about him, it’s that I don’t think he always chooses the best projects.
RISKY BUSINESS is a good example, although it’s a film not without virtues and Cruise actually lifts the film way above the run of the mill. The main character, Joel Goodsen (Cruise), is a senior-year high-schooler in an affluent Chicago neighbourhood. He is pushed out of his safety zone into the demi-monde by the actions of his friend Miles Dalby (Curtis Armstrong) who summons a trans-sexual prostitute after he places a call to a number in an advertisement in an alternative weekly. Jackie (Bruce A. Young) turns up at Joel’s front door and finds she wasn’t wanted, but decides that maybe Lana (Rebecca de Mornay) might help out. Cruise is excellent in portraying a somewhat shy young man whose sexual life is just beginning. Goodsen is out of his depth in this milieu. He becomes a quick learner, but not quick enough.
People do describe this as a critique of the Reagan Era. I’m not so sure. What’s being attacked here is not Reagan or neoliberalism but the more general target of suburban affluence, which already existed in the 1970s. The intersection between the cosseted Goodsen and the hard-scrabble Lana is brought into being to highlight something of a chapter from a bildungsroman which raises the question of how the morals of the suburbanites will fare when encountering the real urban world in which relationships are commodified, never so more intensely than in prostitution.
But, to the film’s discredit, this isn’t the seedy low-class prostitution of street corners in Streatham. Rather we are introduced to high-class prostitution, the women who work the managerial classes in their hotels during business trips. Goodsen’s encounter with this world is solely through its affluent sector. Even in attempting to encounter ‘the real world’ he remains trapped in his bubble. We get the barest of glimpses into what Lana might have undergone to get to the clientele she works with today. Further, it is implied, although not shown, that she is complicit in what happens to Goodsen’s home. Thus, he can forgive her and even perhaps create the basis for something more than a ‘situationship’ going forward. It’s all a bit too nice to be believable.
Goodsen is never really debagged here. As I said, Cruise’s characters are genial, often confront moral challenges but usually land on their feet. RISKY BUSINESS sets the template. Imagine, though, if it had been something closer to REQUIEM FOR A DREAM in flavour, with Goodsen being seduced by a femboy Jackie who calls into question his sexuality, who pillages the Goodsen home in order to pay for a drug addiction and who forces Goodsen into a real choice between an Ivy League future or a life of the streets as a pimp or dealer. Watching Cruise start with his signature dance to ‘Old Time Rock and Roll’ and end having to choose between his father’s hopes or femboy Jackie’s needs would have been a properly gritty film as opposed to this bit of fluff. I have absolute confidence that young Cruise could have pulled it off.
© 2026 Paul Brewer
RISKY BUSINESS is a good example, although it’s a film not without virtues and Cruise actually lifts the film way above the run of the mill. The main character, Joel Goodsen (Cruise), is a senior-year high-schooler in an affluent Chicago neighbourhood. He is pushed out of his safety zone into the demi-monde by the actions of his friend Miles Dalby (Curtis Armstrong) who summons a trans-sexual prostitute after he places a call to a number in an advertisement in an alternative weekly. Jackie (Bruce A. Young) turns up at Joel’s front door and finds she wasn’t wanted, but decides that maybe Lana (Rebecca de Mornay) might help out. Cruise is excellent in portraying a somewhat shy young man whose sexual life is just beginning. Goodsen is out of his depth in this milieu. He becomes a quick learner, but not quick enough.
People do describe this as a critique of the Reagan Era. I’m not so sure. What’s being attacked here is not Reagan or neoliberalism but the more general target of suburban affluence, which already existed in the 1970s. The intersection between the cosseted Goodsen and the hard-scrabble Lana is brought into being to highlight something of a chapter from a bildungsroman which raises the question of how the morals of the suburbanites will fare when encountering the real urban world in which relationships are commodified, never so more intensely than in prostitution.
But, to the film’s discredit, this isn’t the seedy low-class prostitution of street corners in Streatham. Rather we are introduced to high-class prostitution, the women who work the managerial classes in their hotels during business trips. Goodsen’s encounter with this world is solely through its affluent sector. Even in attempting to encounter ‘the real world’ he remains trapped in his bubble. We get the barest of glimpses into what Lana might have undergone to get to the clientele she works with today. Further, it is implied, although not shown, that she is complicit in what happens to Goodsen’s home. Thus, he can forgive her and even perhaps create the basis for something more than a ‘situationship’ going forward. It’s all a bit too nice to be believable.
Goodsen is never really debagged here. As I said, Cruise’s characters are genial, often confront moral challenges but usually land on their feet. RISKY BUSINESS sets the template. Imagine, though, if it had been something closer to REQUIEM FOR A DREAM in flavour, with Goodsen being seduced by a femboy Jackie who calls into question his sexuality, who pillages the Goodsen home in order to pay for a drug addiction and who forces Goodsen into a real choice between an Ivy League future or a life of the streets as a pimp or dealer. Watching Cruise start with his signature dance to ‘Old Time Rock and Roll’ and end having to choose between his father’s hopes or femboy Jackie’s needs would have been a properly gritty film as opposed to this bit of fluff. I have absolute confidence that young Cruise could have pulled it off.
© 2026 Paul Brewer
Mini Review: A bit of 1980s suburban-set fluff rescued by Tom Cruise's skills as an actor.
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