Born On The Fourth Of July on DVD (1989)

John H Glen from London, England , 30/07/2004

First, for those who think that Tom Cruise is just another pretty boy, this movie sets that mistaken view to rest. He is nothing short of dazzling in a role that is extremely demanding, physically, mentally, artistically, and emotionally. I don't see how anybody could play that role and still be the same person.

secondly, Stone's handling of the sex life of Vietnam Veterans in wheelchairs is entirely without sentimentality. There are no rose petals and no soft pedalling. There was no Jane Fonda, as in Coming Home, to play an angel of love. Instead the high school girl friend justifiably went her own way, and love became something you bought if you could afford it.

Thirdly, Stone's portrayal of America, and this movie in reality is about America, from the 1950s to the 1970s, from the simplicity of childhood war games and 4th of July parades down Main street USA to having your guts spill out in a foreign land and your comrades being sent home in body bags, was as ineffaceable as black ink on white paper. He takes us from pleased mothers and fathers and patriotic homilies to the discreditable disregard in our Veteran's hospitals to the bloody clashes between anti-war demonstrators and the police outside convention halls where revelling conventioneers wave flags and mouth spurious slogans.

I have seen most of Stone's work and as far as faithfulness to genuine detail and continuous attentiveness, this is his best. There are a thousand facts 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 sexually when nothing in the middle moves.

Also striking were some of the scenes. The confession scene at the home of the boy Kovic accidentally shot; the Mexican brothel scene of sex/love desperation, the drunken scene at the pool hall bar and the pretty girl's face he touches, and then the drunken, hate-filled rage against his mother, and of course the savage hospital scenes, these and some others were deeply moving.

Yes, predictably, Oliver Stone's political message weighed heavily upon his artistic purpose. Straight-laced conservatives will find his portrait of America one-sided and offensive and something they'd rather forget. But I imagine that the guys, who fought in Vietnam and managed to get back somehow and see this movie, will find it redeeming. Certainly to watch Ron Kovic, just an ordinary Joe who believed in his country and the sentiments of John Wayne movies and comic book heroics, go from a depressed, enraged, drug-addled waste of a human being to an enlightened, focused, articulate, and ultimately triumphant spokesman for the anti-war movement, for veterans, and the disabled was wonderful to see. As Stone reminds us, Kovic really did become the hero that his misguided mother dreamed he would be.

No previous 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 all that eats away at our perception. And yet in the end there is here displayed the triumph of the human will and a story about how a man might find redemption in the most appalling of situations.

  9 out of 9 people found this review helpful

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David Levy from Totteridge, London , 17/04/2004

No one doubts the horror of war. The effects it has on a man cannot be measured. We are lucky enough to live in a time when being called up to fight is less of an issue than it was for the young Americans of the mid-1960's, who lived with the fear of fighting a war they didn't want to fight.

In Oliver Stone's Born On The Fourth Of July, Tom Cruise is one such youth. Your a-typical patriotic all American, he joins the marines by choice, and is shipped out to Vietnam, only to return paralysed, and haunted by what he has seen.

There was much to like about the film. The photography was exquisite in places, and Tom Cruises' performance was outstanding. But, in ytpical Oliver Stone fashion, much of it felt laboured and cumbersome. Police are presented as faceless fascists, and non-sympathisers with the anti-vietnam cause are not treated favourably. Cruise goes from a man upset, but understanding about his injuries to anti-war hero very quickly, and this was the biggest letdown of all for me.

  8 out of 13 people found this review helpful

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Jamesie#1 from LONDON , 02/06/2004

Powerful. Scary. this is really how war is and it is scary because of the huge similarity to the war in iraq. this film shows that war is never just, is never full of glory and killing is always wrong. a shocking film because is shows the truth. I can not recommend this film enough, I am a tom cruise fan anyway so this was indeed a real delight, another 5 star film for me, I think I am giving too many of them out these days!

  3 out of 3 people found this review helpful

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A customer from GLASGOW , 04/03/2006

Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July is not an adaptation of the memoir by Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic, though that’s what the credits indicate. It’s an indulgent style showcase for Stone, who, with his longtime cinematographer Robert Richardson, employs every act of film trickery imaginable that doesn’t involve CGI effects.

Tom Cruise, in a role that was a brave departure for him in 1989, plays Kovic in his adult years. Kovic grows up as a child of the American dream in 1950s Long Island. He’s a God-fearing, baseball-hitting, patriotic lad who lives in an environment full of parades and malt shops. As a high school senior, young Ron doesn’t think twice about signing up for the Marines, believing that he’s doing the right thing for his country.

He does two tours of duty in Vietnam, a time that changes everything. He mistakenly guns down a Vietnamese family; then, minutes later, he accidentally kills a fellow soldier, so Kovic’s mental torment is already hefty when he gets shot in battle, leaving him paralyzed.

After a lengthy stay at an understaffed and filthy VA hospital, Kovic returns home to find the environment has changed. Where’s the red scare everyone was talking about? What happened to the American dream that he pursued? “I don’t feel like myself anymore,” he tells a childhood friend. Kovic starts drinking, rejects God and his family, and wastes time whoring and boozing with other vets in Mexico, where he officially hits rock bottom before making amends with his recent past.

Kovic’s story should be riveting on its own — a young man who realizes a little too late that his whole life has been a sham. Stone, who co-wrote the movie with Kovic, is not content to let Kovic’s life speak for itself. Born on the Fourth of July is a mish-mash of extreme close-ups, slow motion photography, and heavy-handed imagery and sound effects. The result: Kovic’s story gets muffled in all of the gee-whiz technique, zapping any emotion and personal touch from the material. It’s tough to distinguish the subject from Stone’s attempt to wow us with bleached out shots and sound symbolism. John Williams’ saccharine score serves only to turn Kovic into more of a stylistic conduit.

What’s so frustrating is that there are opportunities to show Kovic’s metamorphosis. One is when he takes a trip to visit an old flame (Kyra Sedgwick), now an anti-war protester. The other is the trip to Mexico. Both subplots are important because they open Kovic’s eyes to the failures in his life, but the most effecting parts of those scenes don’t involve any internal reflection. In Syracuse, it’s a student protest that goes violently awry; in Mexico, it’s Cruise and Willem Dafoe spitting at each other in the middle of a desert.

I’ll give Stone credit for capturing the craziness of Kovic’s life, but he fails to give a human face to his free fall. Stone, who (incredibly) won a Best Director Oscar, gives a cinematic face to it. You never feel that Kovic is the subject of his own movie. He’s indeed an outsider, but in the worst way.

  2 out of 2 people found this review helpful

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