Rain Man

Right now you can watch Rain Man in Australia on Stan and MGM Amazon Channel, and in the US on fuboTV and MGM+ Amazon Channel — and it holds up to as much attention as you give it. A tight runtime that never overstays its welcome. 7,161 viewers have already rated it on TMDB — the kind of consensus that does not happen by accident. Watch it for Dustin Hoffman — one of the stronger performances out there right now. Start it on Stan whenever you need something guaranteed to land.

There is a reason Rain Man keeps coming up in conversation. The writing in Rain Man treats its characters as people first, plot devices second. When car dealer Charlie Babbitt learns that his estranged father has died, he returns home to Cincinnati, where he discovers that he has a savant older brother named Raymond and that his father's $3 million fortune is being left to the mental institution in which Raymond lives. Motivated by his father's money, Charlie checks Raymond out of the facility in order to return with him to Los Angeles. The brothers' cross-country trip ends up changing both their lives. Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise lead a cast that treats the material with real seriousness. Rain Man came out in 1988. Rain Man resists tidy resolutions in a way that respects how messy real consequences actually are. It rarely drops the ball, and when it does, it recovers fast.

Rain Man is what you recommend to people who say they do not really watch much. It stands on its own even without an obvious comparison point. The complete film is available and best experienced without too much prior knowledge of where it goes. Dustin Hoffman is the centre of it, and it is one of their strongest performances on record. The patience it asks of you early on is paid back with interest.