Review of Born on the Fourth of July (1989) by Brandon W — 22 Sep 2010

I shouldn't dive head first into a movie, especially one of this nature without having read the book but I just loved this movie so much and have so much reading on my plate I thought fuck it. This is the movie that cemented Stone, Cruise and hell Kyra Sedgwick for me as legitimate movie makers, and while it's fairly predictable at every turn is so well told narratively and artfully directed it even secured itself in my pantheon of favorite films and I thought it was better than Platoon. It dares to be different from the average war film focusing more on the psychology of a soldier going off to war versus when he comes back than the actual war itself and thus produces a fairly unique and wonderful cinematic experience. Cruise gives easily his best performance and I feel Stone himself a Vietnam vet who turned out films about the infamous war like clockwork there for a while finally gets closure on this period of his life that clearly traumatized him so much. Is this bull shit left wing psychobabble or an honest look and analysis of the life of a veteran? Let's have a look see.

So like any good biopic the movie opens with the childhood of protagonist Ron Kovic and his early days in Suburban New York. We see instilled in him early that 40s and 50s white nationalistic pride as he attends Fourth of July Parties with glee (it's fitting the movie should open with one considering the title), eating apple pie at a baseball game or something and listening to JFK's "Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You" speech. It gets a little tedious and even annoying in its smug middle classness but you know Stone you won't have to sit through this bullshit for long. He's (Now Tom Cruise, displaying an unusual range) grown into a whitebread High School All-Star Athlete as pressured by his overbearing devout Catholic Mother (Caroline Kava, giving a downright frightening performance but she'll get hers) who after feeling down about losing a big wrestling match decides to serve his country and be a part of something bigger after hearing a Marine Corps lecture and all that patriotic bullshit and joins with some fellow privileged buddies. Wrapped up in his corny little world he gets a little depressed when he can't get a date to Prom with his school crush Donna (Sedgwick, in a brief but slightly memorable turn that will come later) but ends up going at the end and dances with her the night before he's off to war the seeming beginning of his honorable fairy tale life.

If you knew nothing about Kovic's life or Stone's political views you'd know the movie was about to make a drastic turn as while his mother rabidly supports his choice to enlist his father a Korean vet (Raymond J. Barry, in an understated role) shows some healthy skepticism about it and even tries to persuade him out of it looking back on his own memories without such fondness. It's a real nice touch that most movies of this nature probably wouldn't have, the overbearing mother being the pusher and the father based off his own experiences being the dissenter but it makes sense when you think about it. Guess that's a benefit you get from being based on a true story. We move to '68 Kovic is now a Sergeant and we see him and his troops massacre a small village including women and children believing them to be insurgents. The movie's not that bloody and doesn't have to be it's not even convincingly Vietnam it relies solely on the horror on Kovic's face when he cuts down innocent families in a hut. It doesn't really rub it in your face either, it shows the events as they happen, effectively haunts and tortures the character and respectfully moves on. As they retreat a disoriented and maddened Kovic shoots and kills a young Private named Wilson during a misunderstanding of Stonewall Jackson proportions, it happens quickly and again you have to respect the movie for moving on. It shows that clip again and again in Kovic's tortured mind but we see the foul up and as it would in real life it quickly passes on and the man's death's blamed on Vietcong. Kovic's spirit is finally broken when he goes to confess his crime to his Executive Officer and is effectively told to fuck off there are bigger fish to fry than a man's life. Brutal.

He goes on another dangerous mission not long later and is critically wounded by Helicopter fire...oh shit. He is fortunately saved by another Marine but is paralyzed from the waist down and as he moves to the hospital the movie just gets fucking gritty. At Bronx Veteran's Hospital on top of gruesome war wounds, they are subjected to rats, disgruntled and angry staff, outdated machinery, spread too thin doctors and people just being drugged out of their minds so they'll shut up like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or something. Kovic belligerently still with that can-do attitude tries to regain use of his legs and gets another harsh life lesson when he is forced to return home permanently wheel chair bound. Things are alright at first but Ron blindly clings to his own ideals bitterly lashing out against war protestors including his closest brother Tommy and bitterly trying to cling to his dignity and old ways. We see him slowly breaking though especially when he sees his friend who stayed behind runs a successful burger joint and he's treated like garbage at a local parade by angry students. On the parade in question one of the most powerful scenes for me is just when the fire crackers are going off and he's repeatedly wincing thinking they're bombs. It says so much about the stupidity of how we handle our celebrations of past wars and just how it destroyed the at least happy if disillusioned person he was. Another one of his old buddies Timmy Burns (Frank Whaley, giving his best performance in the scene in question) shows up that night and they drink the night away telling war stories and it's all fairly depressing and dark. It's one of Stone's more powerful monologues though as Burns tries his best to show his old friend how the Government betrayed them and fucked them over and we see how badly in denial Kovic is.

He reunites with Donna later on who we see is an active protestor but he refuses her invitation to come to a vigil with her as he's mentally not there yet and is embarrassed clearly by his wheelchair and being around her reminds him of his once powerful build. She's arrested with some others for protesting and they're separated, depressing but that's life grab the one you love and don't let go I guess would be the moral of that story. But what stands out as far and away the movie's most powerful moment is when he returns home bearded and shaggy some time later from a drunken near bar fight where we see his descent into decadence when he gets in this fucking intense verbal confrontation with his mother. You can just feel the emotions the anger, the rage, the resentment built up in Cruise's voice as he accuses his mother of ruining his life by bullshitting him about patriotic duty and all that and I don't know the scene really grabs me. Especially the gritty, gritty moment where he pulls out the before unaddressed catheter where his penis once was and shakes it around in front of his mom to her disgust and horror, your mind is just exploding from the power of that gesture.

Kovic slipping from sanity almost travels to a Mexican resort city where other veterans have gone to drink away their problems in a sun drenched paradise. He has a sexual encounter, very odd indeed with a prostitute and afterwards actually proposes marriage before realizing the stupidity of his actions and backing out. He befriends a wheel chair bound Veteran as well Charlie (Willem Dafoe, with his fantastic can do no wrong range in one of his best performances) and ends up leaving with him once he flies into a rage over a prostitute mocks his inability to get it up due to paralyzation and general hostility of the townspeople after that. They hit the road for another nearby town and after a bigoted statement he and Charlie end up stranded on the road in the middle of the desert with dusk approaching. They both just flip the shit on each other and even get in a fight causing them to fall from their wheel chairs and it's a fantastic scene great to see two masters at work and as I'm sure you imagined in the depths of craziness and ludicrosity Kovic recovers his insanity and the rest is history.

I won't spoil the conclusion of his inner turmoil and what he does with his life as one is very unexpected and touching and the other in typical biopic style moves to quickly to wrap it up in a dignified way for its own good. But like any good biopic you just don't care at this point, the subject's life story has been told in a creative way we the audience have learned from his experiences and the director and actors in the meantime have showed a mastery of film making to keep us entertained the whole time. So nothing left to say great fucking movie that should be watched by all even haters of Stone and Cruise.