Far and Away: Cruise Killed It
Far and Away, Universal (1992)
By C. A. Ramirez
Once every hundred thousand years or so, when the sun doth shine, and the moon doth glow, a potentially fantastic film is brought down by one accent. One, atrocious, off-putting, ear-searing pronunciation, has the power to topple entire films, regardless of the remaining cast’s stellar performance. The human eye has its issues with spotting faux fur, but a poor accent drills its way into the ear canal of the viewer, shattering the suspension of disbelief with every mispronounced syllable. Written and directed by the legendary boy from Mayberry, Ron Howard, Far and Away is nearly a perfect film if it weren’t for the dreadful Irish accent of its pint-sized star.
Tom Cruise is a fantastic actor. What a man does in the privacy of his own home is his business. Who among us has not taken a bath in a tepid pool of Pepto-Bismol whilst dictating your last will and testament to a four-foot notary dressed as a Keebler elf? This is America damnit, and I’ll be goddamned if I’m about to allow the jack-booted thugs of the government tell me how to live my life, but I digress. The main problem with Tom Cruise in Far and Away is he is in it. Through some form of voodoo, or some kind of cartel inspired Santeria, Tom Cruise convinced Ron Howard he could do a great Irish accent; an egregious crime against Ireland was committed on that foul day. Once Lucifer's black smoke dissipated from the room, Tom Cruise proceeded to walk on set and belt out a bizarre performance, delivering lines that sound like a drunk American pretending to be Irish. Not since Madonna adopted a British accent has a United Kingdom dialect been so disastrously dictated. The performance of any one actor does not always condemn an entire film to failure, but I must emphasize the level of patience required to withstand Tom Cruise’s ghastly Irish accent.
Nicole Kidman’s performance is fine, as is the rest of the cast. Their accents and roles suit the actors and actresses like a calf-skin glove. Irish native, Colm Meaney, stars as Mike Kelly, the owner of a premier Irish social club. Meaney’s role is one of his most recognizable of his 1990’s roles, and proves once more that the Irishman is a necessity on any film set that dares to include characters from the emerald isle. The movie picks up steam once Kidman and Cruise leave Ireland for Boston, but the whole film feels like a vehicle for Kidman and Cruise to further flout their then, dazzling Hollywood marriage. Far and Away nearly comes off as a precursor-cursor to other celebrity couple movies that fizzled at the box office; at its heart, its Gigli, with wonderful cinematography.
The story is actually quite entertaining. A poor Irish potato farmer (yes, it demands an imagination) falls in love with his land lord’s English daughter. The two abscond together to America, struggling to trust each other and stay alive long enough to make it to Oklahoma, where land is being given away to new settlers. Looking past Tom Cruise’s dreadful performance, the movie is stellar. Ron Howard’s point of view is masterful, rivaled only by other legendary filmmakers like (Steven) Spielberg, and (James) Cameron.
Far and Away was made well before computers were powerful enough to produce a convincing on-screen image. The scope and scale of certain sequences, especially the land grab scene, is astonishing. Tons of extras had to be managed and dressed in age-appropriate costumes. The absence of a green screen makes a huge difference, and younger generations are in a perfect position to make this critique for the rest of us, having grown up with CGI extras in the backgrounds of movies. It would be interesting to see which they prefer.
Down to brass tacks, the movie is enjoyable, and it's free of any politically correct, amended-American history. Today’s movies have to tip-toe through the tulips when it comes to offending the faceless throngs of social media, but Far and Away pulls off a nice job at depicting the staunch racism Irish people experienced during the infancy of this nation’s history. At the same time, this is not some epic akin to The Last of the Mohicans, or even Dances with Wolves; instead, Far and Away is an adventure that turns the viewer into an early settler, thrust into a foreign land that barely resembles the United States of today.
Ron Howard has a keen eye for detail and every facet of early Boston is alive and well. Victorian homes capture the rarified atmosphere of the affluent blue-bloods of society, while saloons and halfway homes stand in stark contrast with their nefarious, and brooding environment. Had the set directors been given a little acid and forced to listen to a twenty-four-hour loop of The Cure, the sets of Far and Away are whimsical, and convincing enough to be spliced into any Harry Potter film without notice.
Far and Away delivers a fantastic vision of an early American world on the cusp of seizing modernity, in its economics, politics, and societal norms. The struggle of the people that wound up solidifying America as a melting pot of hard-working immigrants is front and center. The film holds up the early American ancestors of this great country, and exemplifies the tenacity, endurance, and strength they embodied, enabling them to help erect and sustain one of the greatest nations of the modern world. That accent though, is truly atrocious and marks Cruise’s last attempt at playing a character with one, and for damn good reason, it nearly kills the entire film. A sound is capable of murder, but only when the victim is a film that has Tom Cruise as an Irishman.
