Cocktail (1988)

★ 6.1 1h 44m 1,602 votes IMDb
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After being discharged from the Army, Brian Flanagan moves back to Queens and takes a job in a bar run by Doug Coughlin, who teaches Brian the fine art of bar-tending. Brian quickly becomes a patron favorite with his flashy drink-mixing style, and Brian adopts his mentor's cynical philosophy on life and goes for the money.

Cocktail

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Cast

Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise as Brian Flanagan Age 63 · Syracuse, New York, USA Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (born July 3, 1962) is an American actor and film producer. Regarded as a Hollywood icon, he has received various accolades, including an Honorary Palme d'Or and three Golden...
Bryan Brown
Bryan Brown as Douglas "Doug" Coughlin Age 78 · Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Bryan Neathway Brown (born 23 June 1947) is an Australian actor. He has performed in over eighty film and television projects since the late 1970s, both in his native Australia and abroad. Notable fil...
Elisabeth Shue
Elisabeth Shue as Jordan Mooney Age 62 · Wilmington, Delaware, USA Elisabeth Judson Shue (born October 6, 1963) is an American actress, best known for her starring roles in the films The Karate Kid (1984), Adventures in Babysitting (1987), Cocktail (1988), Back to th...
Lisa Banes
Lisa Banes as Bonnie Died 2021 · Chagrin Falls, Ohio, USA Lisa Banes (July 9, 1955 – June 14, 2021) was born in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, USA. She was an American actress, known for Gone Girl (2014), A Cure for Wellness (2016) and Cocktail (1988). She died on Jun...
Kelly Lynch
Kelly Lynch as Kerry Coughlin Age 67 · Golden Valley, Minnesota, USA Kelly Lynch (born January 31, 1959) is an American actress. Once a model for the Elite modeling agency, Lynch appeared in the film Drugstore Cowboy which starred Matt Dillon, and the film Road House w...
Gina Gershon
Gina Gershon as Coral Age 63 · San Fernando Valley, California, USA Gina L. Gershon (born June 10, 1962) is an American film, television and stage actress, singer and author. She is known for her roles in the films Cocktail (1988), Showgirls (1995), Bound (1996), Face...

Audience Reviews

CinemaSerf 5/10 Jun 09, 2022
There was something about Tom Cruise in this film that shows him at his most engaging and fun. His character "Brian" wants to get on in life - but at every turn his limited of education gets in the way. Despondent, he heads to a bar where he encounters "Doug" (Bryan Brown) and next thing we know, he is a cocktail barman. A bit slow to start off with, but soon he has the clientele eating out of his hand as his charm and cheekiness soon show he has a real skill for this job. The first half hour or so are actually quite lively and entertaining. We also get a sense of just how hard - manic, even - it is to be behind the bar in a busy venue - maybe I will show a little more patience next time I have to wait for my Sauvignon Blanc (though probably not!). The bulk of the film, though, is really weak and feeble. He falls in love, cheats, falls out of love, drops the bottle, does he or doesn't he get the girl (Elisabeth Shue)? Then the film is tinged with a little bit of tragedy just in case the fluffiness of it all was making us light-headed. The ending is sort of imposed upon us, and after 100 minutes it took it's time to deliver the obvious. If you don't drink, you'll almost certainly hate it. If you do drink, then you will probably still not rate it much, but at least you will learn how to put fruit juice in a martini!
Wuchak 7/10 Sep 10, 2023
**_Fun 80’s flick starts shallow, gets deeper_**

Bent on financial success, a young ex-soldier (Tom Cruise) becomes an expert bartender in Manhattan while attending college in order to make it on Wall Street. Then a dream surfaces to establish a nightclub in Jamaica. Bryan Brown plays his cynical mentor while Elisabeth Shue and Lisa Banes are on hand as romantic interests.

“Cocktail” (1988) is an entertaining Cruise-led 80’s flick that starts energetic, amusing and shallow but, thankfully, fleshes out the characters for something deeper. It’s fun in a snappy way, yet hindered by a feeling of unreality in the first half, which is resolved in the second.

Brown is reminiscent of Michael Caine while Shue is in her prime, although her beauty isn’t fully captured as it was in “The Karate Kid” and the later “Leaving Las Vegas” (the fools). Laurence Luckinbill shows up in the last act; he would go on to superbly play Sybok in “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier” the next year.

The ending is fine, but a bar is a bar, a place where people get soused. You can make a good living from it, sure, but does that benefit or deter humanity in the grand scheme of things?

The film runs 1 hour, 43 minutes, and was shot in Toronto and Ocho Rios, Jamaica.

GRADE: B

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