BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY
A film review by Laurie Mann
Copyright 1990 Laurie Mann
While there are a few missteps in the movie, the acting is superb. I never really considered Tom Cruise an actor until I saw this film. Oliver Stone continues building on his reputation as a director who creates visceral, gut-wrenching movies. An 8 or 9 on the Chuck scale.
BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY is the true story of Ron Kovic, a rabble-rousing Viet Nam paraplegic and how he got that way. The film opens idyllically in the late '50s, when little Ronny Kovic is playing soldiers with his friends. The action switches to the 4th of July parade, where we meet Ronny's ever-growing family, and Donna, the girl who'll break his heart eventually. The scenes of Massapequa, New York are scenes of a safe home, where the greatest danger is Mom finding a Playboy in teenaged Ronny's room.
As a teenager, Ronny is a driven idealist who goes into the Marines right after graduation. The action jumps ahead three years, and we see Sargeant Kovic, an almost-hardened soldier. Almost immediately, there's shooting and death, and within fifteen minutes of the film's arrival in Vietnam, there's the awful scene of Ron Kovic going down fighting, followed by five minutes of hell in the field hospital. I couldn't watch most of the field hospital sequences; it was some of the most gruesome stuff I'd ever seen. But it was never gratuitous. The audience is as numbed by the gore as Ron Kovic was.
The next sequences in the Bronx VA hospital are so outrageous that they can only be true. Kovic pushes himself, and pushes some more, and eventually is forced to realize that he'll never walk again. He never really accepts that, or his experiences in Vietnam, and sinks into alcoholism after he returns home to Massapequa.
A lot goes on in the 2-1/2-hour running time of this movie. His conversion to a militant pacifist and vet against the war happens pretty quickly near the end of the movie. But Tom Cruise really makes us believe that Ron Kovic spent the first few years of his physical paralysis as a sort of emotional spastic. A person who let the world go on so long as he could drink, and would only occasionally let the rage show.
The supporting cast, particularly the actors who play Kovic's parents, are all fine. Willem Dafoe has a great turn as a drugged-out paraplegic Kovic meets in Mexico.
As much as I like the movie, I noticed the following problems with it:
1. The movie has an awful sense of time, and only intermittently tells
the viewer what year it is.
2. Vietnam looked too much like Mexico. That's because Stone shot the Vietnam portions in Mexico. Then he chose almost IDENTICAL opening shots (incredibly yellow aerial shots of sand dunes) to establish both locales (Kovic goes to Mexico for some R&R).
3. Kovic has a major falling out with his parents. So they disappear
from the movie completely when he goes to Mexico. That doesn't
make a lot of sense, since his family had been such a big part
of his life up till that point. Even to see a shot of Mrs.
Kovic crying when her son appears on TV at the '72 Republican
National Convention would have been fine.
4. Same problem with Donna. The movie strongly implies that she's gotten married, and she introduces Kovic to anti-war protests. She also completely disappears from the movie.
5. I didn't think the sex scene (which is detailed in this month's
Premire magazine) worked all that well. I understand that it
wasn't supposed to be all that erotic, but it just felt
rather muddled.
6. The movie could have been trimmed by about another five minutes with no damage done, particularly the murky scene after the very dramatic disruption of the Republican National Convention.
7. The last shot of the movie shows Kovic about to officially
address the Democratic National Convention in 1976. It would
have been terrific to show the real Ron Kovic addressing the
the crowd under the credits.
/*I'm a woman by nature, a mother by choice. ** Capitalist for choice! Laurie Mann ** harvard!m2c!jjmhome!lmann ** lmann%jjmhome@m2c.m2c.org Work: Stratus Computer ** Home: Northboro, MA ** lmann@jjmhome.UUCP */
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