Type of bind: Video On Demand
Release Date: October 01, 2008
Running Time: 145 minutes
Sale Popularity Level: 11823
Studio: Universal Studios
Theatrical Release Date: December 19, 1989
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The Bottom Line:
Though Born on the Fourth of July has its share of powerful and/or effective moments, nearly all of them occur in the film's very first half; overlong, and with a tendency to ramble, this is a flawed film.
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Everybody and their brother thinks this is a war film classic. I don't. I grew up in Massapequa, knew Ron Kovic (slightly), hung out at Arthur's Bar, got my hair cut at Sparky The Barber's, I played in Sally's Woods as a kid, and watched God knows how many holiday parades down Broadway. Growing up, they occurred on every major holiday except The Feast of The Assumption.
Massapequa's the kind of place you love and hate at the same time. It's a fly in the amber. The schools are excellent. Businesses like All-American and Krisch's Ice Cream Parlour have been there since 1955 and remain surprisingly unchanged. The town's underlying values remain intact, mostly because the kids that grew up there in the Fifties inherited their parents' houses and have passed them on to their kids now. On the Fourth of July the smoke from "illegal" fireworks is so dense that spy satellites can't penetrate it (this is a documented fact). There's been a spate of new construction, if you can consider a spate to have lasted 25 years, but beyond that, it's still home as I remember it.
So the ersatz Massapequa (a town in Vermont that they dressed up) in this film was a little disconcerting to me: "Lemke Hardware wasn't even on the same street as Krisch's, and Krisch's is Krisch's, not Boyer's!"
Hollywood.
And this wasn't even the original film. The original BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY by Brian DePalma starred Al Pacino and was made, or partly made, in 1978. The Internet Movie Database tells me that the "financing fell through" but I can recall the Pequa Theater marquee showing "Love Story" during some filming. They were actually going to use Massapequa to represent Massapequa in that version.
Actually, the sets don't bother me half as much as Tom Cruise. Pacino would have made this movie a TRUE classic. Cruise is real good at playing the teenaged Ronnie Kovic, but he utterly blows the role once Ronnie Gets His Gun. Cruise spends most of the movie overacting shamelessly, like yelling "Penis, penis, penis!" in a badly-acted "drunk" scene, and turning the heart-rending bitter anger of Ron Kovic's searingly sad book into something like pablum for the ease of audience digestion. We needed grit and despair in this movie. We got Tom Cruise, and not the Tom Cruise of A FEW GOOD MEN or THE LAST SAMURAI, we got the Tom Cruise of Jumping On Oprah's Couch Tom Cruise.
War is hell. It should be presented as such. And so should it's hellish consequences. Like the Massapequa it presents the Ron Kovic of this film is not the real deal.
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I'm no fan of Oliver Stone (see my 1 star review for Platoon) or his politics, and even though this film's ultimate "message" is overtly political (Vietnam was a worthless cause, based on lies) and somewhat mendacious in pushing that left-wing agenda (it was the Republicans' fault), I still rate it highly based solely on its portrayal of Ron Kovic's personal story. This movie depicts with heartbreaking realism the experience of an All-American boy who comes home from the Vietnam War paralyzed from the waist down. Surely it can't be considered political to tell that story, can it? That would be the specious and self-interested argument of your typical neocon warmonger, who would like to keep the cameras away from Walter Reed, where the 19 and 20 year old victims of their phony war learn to cope with life without arms or legs or recognizably human faces. I think it's a good thing for the flag-waving public to understand the consequences of their jingoism and see what soldiers have to sacrifice. This movie makes that lesson quite clear. It can be raw and explicit, but so is getting your spinal cord snapped in two. Tom Cruise gives a fantastic performance here, the supporting cast is very first rate, and the extraordinary attention to visual detail combine to create a moving and powerful film. My one complaint is that it doesn't really explain Kovic's conversion from super-patriot to anti-war activist, and represents him as a singularly inarticulate spokesman, at that. It seems to present his argument as amounting to nothing more than "I'm mad" and "The government lied!". Perhaps the real life Kovic had a more cogent position, but I didn't get that from the movie. In any case, it's an emotional and powerful look at one soldier's ordeal of tragedy and recovery.
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The controversial filmmaker Oliver Stone copped an Best Director Oscar for his true story about Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic's rebirth as a peace activist. Also Cruise scored an Oscar nod for his fine performance as Kovic and he's ably supported by a fine cast which includes a very young Kyra Sedgwick as his very first love, Tom Berenger as a Marine recruiter, and Wilem Dafoe as a fellow parapalegic vet. The story concerns Kovic's change from a patriotic young man to a battle scarred parapalegic, disillusioned Vietnam vet to finally a committed peace activist. It's quite a journey and this may well be Cruise's best performance to date alongside his best supporting performance in "Magnolia". Forget about his off screen antics and his Scientology posturing and check this one out for his fine performance. I really think that Stone should also have received a Best Picture for this film too. By the way, the HD copy is a winner also.
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I like this movie! Born on the Fourth of July was written in Santa Monica, California during the fall of 1974 in exactly one month, three weeks and two days. It tells the story of Kovic's life growing up in Massapequa, New York, joining the Marines going to Vietnam, getting shot, finding himself wheelchair bound, and eventually starting a new life as an anti-war activist.
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