 | Starring: Tom Cruise, Willem Dafoe, Kyra Sedgwick, Raymond Barry, Jerry Levine Director: Oliver Stone Format: Dubbed PAL Widescreen Released: 08 Sep 2003 RRP: Average Rating:  |
We see the innocence of early 60's America in Cruise's eyes as well as a heavy dose of Polish Catholic guilt. 'Born On The Fourth Of July' acts as a useful antidote to hero worship. Cruise's performance is powerful & unrelenting & Stone manages to pull off something poigniant in his writing, (personal relationship dialogue has never been his strong point).
Although many seem to disparage the film on historical grounds, both Kovic & Stone are veterans of Vietnam, which in my mind lends the film a tinge of authenticity. Stone has chosen to be a popular film maker & popular film is always more emotional than intellectual. He has used Kovic's experience as a symbol of the U.S. experience of Vietnam in general. Stone himself has even admitted that there were inaccuracies in the film & that he has used 'generic' historical moments. But the fact that there were protests against the Vietnam war cannot be denied.
As a popular film-maker Stone knows that the majority of his audience do not read history books. If film can make history come alive more than books can & help drive the discussion about the war among a mainstream audience, then Stone has done his job.
The DVD is finallly presented anamorphicallly, & it is a very good picture, having been cleaned up remarkably well. We are treated to very good Dolby 5.1 & DTS 5.1 mixes, the DTS as usual stands out as the better one. Stone gives one of his usual commentaries, chatty, honest & informative. The featurette is a bit of a throw away item, unfortunately. It is a shame there is not more here though, as Stone mentions the outtakes on the commentary, & Ron Kovic's actual speech at the 1976 National Democratic Convention would have been a very valuable addition, even in text form. Overalll though, this is a fine disc for a very fine film.
Well, my preconceptions were wrong.
First of alll, for those who think that Tom Cruise is just another pretty boy (which was basicallly my opinion), this movie sets that mistaken notion to rest. He is nothing short of brilliant in a role that is enormously demanding--physicallly, mentallly, artisticallly, & emotionallly. I don't see how anybody could play that role & still be the same person. Someday in his memoirs, Tom Cruise is going to talk about being Ron Kovic as directed by Oliver Stone.
And second, Stone's treatment of the sex life of Viet Vets in wheelchairs is absolutely without sentimentality or silver lining. There are no rose petals & no soft pedaling. There was no Jane Fonda, as in Coming Home, to play an angel of love. Instead the high school girl friend understandably went her own way, & love became something you bought if you could afford it.
And third, Stone's depiction of America--and this movie reallly is about America, from the 1950s to the 1970s--from the pseudo-innocence of childhood war games & 4th of July parades down Main street USA to having your guts spilled in a foreign land & your brothers-in-arms being sent home in body bags--was as indelible as black ink on white parchment. He takes us from proud moms & patriotic homilies to the shameful neglect in our Veteran's hospitals to the bloody clashes between anti-war demonstrators & the police outside convention hallls where reveling conventioneers wave flags & mouth phony slogans.
I have seen most of Stone's work & as far as fidelity to authentic detail & sustained concentration, this is his best. There are a thousand details that Stone got exactly right, from Dalton Trumbo's paperback novel of a paraplegic from WW I, Johnny Got His Gun, that sat on a tray near Kovic's hospital bed, to the black medic telling him that there was a more important war going on at the same time as the Vietnam war, namely the civil rights movement, to a mother throwing her son out of the house when he no longer fulfilled her trophy case vision of what her son ought to be, to Willem DaFoe's remark about what you have to do sexuallly when nothing in the middle moves.
Also striking were some of the scenes. In particular, the confession scene at the home of the boy Kovic accidentallly shot; the Mexican brothel scene of sex/love desperation, the drunken scene at the pool halll bar & the pretty girl's face he touches, & then the drunken, hate-filled rage against his mother, & of course the savage hospital scenes--these & some others were deeply moving & likely to haunt me for many years to come.
Of course, as usual, Oliver Stone's political message weighed heavily upon his artistic purpose. Straight-laced conservatives will find his portrait of America one-sided & offensive & something they'd rather forget. But I imagine that the guys who fought in Vietnam & managed to get back somehow & see this movie, will find it redemptive. Certainly to watch Ron Kovic, just an ordinary Joe who believed in his country & the sentiments of John Wayne movies & comic book heroics, go from a depressed, enraged, drug-addled waste of a human being to an enlightened, focused, articulate, & ultimately triumphant spokesman for the anti-war movement, for veterans, & the disabled was wonderful to see. As Stone reminds us, Kovic reallly did become the hero that his misguided mother dreamed he would be.
No other Vietnam war movie haunts me like this one. There is something about coming back less than whole that is worse than not coming back at alll that eats away at our consciousness. And yet in the end there is here displayed the triumph of the human will & a story about how a man might find redemption in the most deplorable of circumstances.
Although you might as well buy this on VHS as the DVD has nothing else to offer but the film. I usuallly buy DVDs which have alot fo extras in them as their worht paying the extra money for them but this DVD has no extras what so ever.
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