Self-centered, avaricious Californian Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) is informed that his long-estranged father has died. Expecting at least a portion of the elder Babbitt's $3 million estate, Charlie learns that all he's inherited is his dad's prize roses and a 1949 Buick Roadmaster. Since the car represents a humiliating incident from Charlie's teen years, the resentful young man assumes that his father is still trying to "get" him from the grave. Discovering that the $3 million is being held in trust for an unidentified party, Charlie heads to his home town of Cincinnati to ascertain who that party is. It turns out that the beneficiary is Raymond Babbitt (Dustin Hoffman), the autistic-savant older brother Charlie never knew he had. Able to memorize reams of movie, TV and sports trivia and to add, subtract, multiply and divide without a second's hesitation, Raymond is otherwise completely incapable of functioning as a normal human being. Aghast that Raymond is to receive his father's entire legacy, Charlie tries to cut a deal with Raymond's guardian. When this fails, Charlie "borrows" Raymond from the institution where he lives, hoping to use his brother as leverage in order to claim half the fortune. During their subsequent cross-country odyssey, Charlie is forced to accommodate Raymond's various autistic idiosyncracies, not the least of which is his childlike insistence upon adhering to a rigid daily schedule (he must, for example, watch People's Court and Jeopardy every day at the same time, no matter what). Upon hitting Las Vegas, Charlie hopes to harness Raymond's finely-honed mathematical skills to win big at the gaming tables; but this shameless exploitation of his brother's affliction compels Charlie to reassess his own values, or lack thereof. By journey's end, a thorouhgly humanized Charlie has come to realize that he genuinely loves Raymond-and, as trite as it sounds, that it is far better to give than to receive. A longtime pet project of star Dustin Hoffman, Rain Man was turned down by several high-profile directors before Barry Levinson took on the challenge of bringing Ronald Bass' demanding screenplay to fruition (Levinson himself appears in the film as a psychiatrist). That Dustin Hoffman would win an Academy Award for his astonishing performance was a foregone conclusion; it's too bad that Tom Cruise's performance, which in the context of the film was the more difficult of the two, could not be similarly honored. Oscars also went to director Levinson, screenwriter Bass, and the film itself; Rain Man also collected a Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear award, a Directors' Guild of America award, and two Golden Globes.