When the Neon Promised Forever
Prior to the 2018 release of Cruise, it was the type of film garnering nostalgic buzz in the manner of cinema. Written and directed by Robert Siegel—who was to become noted for The Wrestler and Big Fan—Siegel was expected to deliver an alluring mix of chrome, youth, and rebellion illuminated by the neons of Queens, New York. Cruise was promoted as not for just another retro romance but for an homage to an epoch of unencumbered, free-spirited youth, where revving engines and synth sounds fused to offer an endless, euphoric night of neon seduction.
Those anticipating an exhilarating, street-racing film in the lane of Fast & Furious were in for an unpleasant surprise. Cruise, by contrast, delivered a quiet, deeply personal film. It was not about the cars; it was about the people in the vehicles, frantically driven towards an elusive goal.
Hype was limited, but charged. Followers Siegel’s works looked for the realism while admirers of the stars—Spencer Boldman and Emily Ratajkowski—expected glaring, explosive chemistry. They received, rather, a glossy, nostalgic fantasy weighed down by the painful reality of growing older.
The Beat of a Summer That Wouldn’t Last
The movie tells the story of Gio Fortunato (Spencer Boldman) an Italian-American working-class grease monkey who likes automobiles, women, and the nightlife. He is the kind of guy who enjoys burnout and backseat kisses, a true guy from the youth of the past. Things change for the better and the worst when he meets Jessica Weintraub (Emily Ratajkowski), a rich long island Jewish girl seeking adventure and living in the down of queens.
The two came close during the summer in the hot flickering street lights and the beating music. The two began as a new flirt and began an identity exploration. They loose themselves in a world of inter identity conflict while pretending they are free. Jessica wants Gio’s rough edge and authenticity while Gio wants Jessica’s depth, sophistication and the mystery surrounding her.
As time passed on, the film began to slowly pull away from its glossy long awaited summer dreams. The close polished cars and neatly tailored wardrobes were a begin demise of the polished world. The world of Gio, the masculine who holds perfect rebellion and reputation slowly began to fall while the danger fantasy of an unsophisticated Jessica started to fall as well.
The film is nostalgic, deep down the director focuses on the melancholic spark. The sparkle have a dream in the 80’s cut down to a soft rusty finish, the 80’s dream.
Defiance of Spencer Boldman’s Image
For Spencer Boldman, Cruise was meant to be the start of something big. He had landed an important role on Disney XD’s Lab Rats, but wanted to expand to something more grown-up, something that would show he was more than just a TV heartthrob. He saw Gio as that opportunity, a character who was equally charming, arrogant and achingly vulnerable.
In preparation for the role, he devoted countless hours to immersing himself in the 1980s culture. He studied tapes of young Stallone and Travolta in an attempt to master the old-school New York swagger. With the vintage muscle cars that would later be used in the film, he learned to drive and tried to fix to cars that would break down during filming due to their age and authenticity.
Still more than the aesthetics, he really connected with Gio’s crisis of existentialism. It was the fear of being defined by his origin, by his block. “Wanting to matter beyond your block, he just doesn’t know how to express that.” he would say in an interview.
Despite the critics being divided on the film, praise for Boldman’s transformation was unanimous. His portrayal as Gio was an incredible dynamic. He was not a caricature of machoism but rather a boy trapped in a man’s body, a boy terrified of the adult world that idolizes bravado.
Emily Ratajkowski: More Than the Dream Girl
Casting Emily Ratajkowski as Jessica was both a commercial move and an artistic gamble. By 2018, she was still best known for her modeling and for her breakout role in Gone Girl (2014). Many expected her to play yet another seductive archetype—but Cruise gave her something else: vulnerability wrapped in rebellion.
Jessica isn’t the femme fatale she appears to be. Beneath her wealthy exterior lies an ache for authenticity. Ratajkowski leaned into that emotional complexity, drawing parallels with her own experience of being typecast by her public image. “Jessica wants to be seen for who she is, not what she represents,” she said. “That’s something I understood.”
Her chemistry with Boldman feels both spontaneous and restrained, mirroring two people who sense the impossibility of their connection. Their relationship becomes the film’s quiet tragedy—beautiful but destined to stall, like an engine that burns too fast.
Style, Sound, and the Echo of the Eighties
One of the strongest attributes of Cruise is the film’s atmosphere. Unlike his prior realism, for this film, Siegel fully embraces the stylization that is apparent everywhere, from the soft neon, vintage textured, and nostalgia-evoking cinematography to the mixtape of 80s classics and synths that accompanies the film. He succeeds in making nostalgia a living, breathing character.
That said, the tone was described as uneven and imbalanced by some, for the film was excessive in its aesthetics and lack of a narrative. Nevertheless, this seems to be a creative choice, for Cruise was never meant to come across as polished. It is meant to feel like a memory, and like all memories, there is a fragment and romanticization to the narrative.
Rather than relying on CGI, the film’s tactile quality is created by its car sequences. To capture the look and feel of the city prior to gentrification, Director of Photography Adam J. Bricker used real streets of Queens and Brooklyn, complete with graffiti, corner diners, and roaring muscle cars.
To Siegel, the film was a love letter and a lament. “I wanted to make something that felt like a song you used to dance to,” he reflected. “It’s not about what happens; it’s about how it feels when it ends.”
When The Glow Faded
Nonetheless, the nostalgic promise of Cruise was to no one’s surprise not the box office success. Its brief theatrical release followed by a muted release on Netflix meant it wasn’t a mainstream hit. Yet the appreciation the film garnered was of a certain kind; there was a subset of audience, mostly viewers of 80s cinema and indie drama, who saw 80s indie cinema and drama and appreciated the painful neurosis of the film.
There were also struggles in the production. The budget was small, and the crew was in a constant state of McGyvering. On certain nights, the crew shot guerrilla style on the city streets. One of the nighttime guerrilla style shoots was when it was so freezing that Ratajkowski was said to have gotten sick.
One of the casting rumors that did the rounds was that the film’s male lead was supposed to be written for a more prominent actor. Siegel, however, insisted on going with “someone who still had something to prove.” Along with this, there also came the soul of Cruise: a film about dreamers for dreamers, in a world that was slowly fading.
Perhaps that is why Cruise remains unobtrusive among Netflix’s offerings: it is a film about individuals pursuing freedom, only to realize that they are attempting to capture only their own selves.
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