Thanks Stephen, for making me remember why Risky Business was such a good film. I always remember that it had a hard-edged, well -- naughtiness seems a silly word, but... It was so uncompromising in its embrace of that 80s uber-capitalist ethos...until Wall Street comes along a few years later, Risky Business was all about bare-knuckled success for its own sake. And Tom Cruise was amazing.

Don't know if I agree about about the correlation to junk bonds. Cruise is hard to take in most roles because he is so massive, and I concede that in his best roles after his very earliest films (Magnolia, Collateral, War of the Worlds, etc.) he is very good at displaying a lack of warmth, a sort-of animal-like amorality. But one thing I think people tend to overlook is how damn hard Cruise works. The man has been in the rarefied air of Robertses, Hankes, Smiths; he believes more so than any of those other that the success of any film he participates in is entirely dependent upon him, every movement he makes. And, to a large extent, he's right. Who can give a genuine performance while bearing those expectations? And who among us can relate to someone like that?

If you don't believe, just think about how the guy runs in movies. You ever see someone run that freakishly hard no mater who he is playing?