BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY

Cole's Rating: ★★★ ½

Jesse's Rating: ★★★ ½

Director: Oliver Stone
Year: 1989
Cast: Tom Cruise, Raymond J. Barry, Caroline Kava
Genre: Biography/Drama/War
MPAA Rating: R

  Before Oblivion and Jack Reacher, Tom Cruise didn’t just pay someone to act for him, or “phone it in”, a phrase we fellow movie critics use for weak performances from a good actor. That statement is evident in his best performance by far, Born on the Fourth of July (I haven’t yet seen Cocktail or Risky Business, but then, I don’t believe I stand corrected). Here he plays the most difficult type of character that film has ever created: a confused man that possesses both internal and external conflicts, and executes it flawlessly.

  Cruise stars here as a boy (not adult) who chooses to enlist in the Vietnam war, in attempt to “serve like our fathers” and stop the spread of communism, or so he thought at the time. When he returns, he eats his words per se, because he is paralyzed from the chest down and passionately believes that the United States government lied to him, and wrongly persuaded him to help in the war effort, thus transforming the once all-star wrestler and innocent kid into an angry anti-war activist. When you watch a movie that is sad, the most harrowing and sorrowful moments are usually at the end; that’s not the case here. The movie is shot in such a raw manner, that you feel as if you really are witnessing life’s most gruesome moments and the truth of reality. It’s almost too much to ask for nowadays, and maybe that’s why I enjoyed Robert Zemeckis’ Flight more than most viewers of the film because it's so shockingly realistic. In reality, there are unhappy times all throughout the course of one’s life, not just at end’s meet; that is shown displayed relentlessly in Born on the Fourth of July.

  In many sports, there is the term “triple-threat”, which means that the person identified as such can pose a risk to the other team with three different actions. I think it’s safe to say that Oliver Stone is at least a triple-threat player in the finest sport of all, cinema. His film’s excel in most areas: cast, story, material, enjoyability, memorability, and emotion (from the characters and the audience)—yet he, or a lot of his movies make one significant flaw in their outcome, and that is the ending. Stone seems to speed up the process of closing out his movies by rushing the characters into getting along, or in most cases, just creating an accepting tone for the characters, thus changing the atmosphere that the rest of the movie tried so hard to create. As an audience member, I was put off entirely by the abrupt change.  That’s what keeps Born on the Fourth of July from being a better movie—and Oliver Stone, a better director—and that’s a shame.

        But overall, the movie's the far from a letdown. In fact, I'd place it generously in my top 50 films of all time. I'd say that it is among Tom Cruise's best films of all time, it's in Oliver Stone's top five films of all time, and among some of the best war films of all time. After seeing this, it's safe to say that I'm a proud admirer of Oliver Stone's work (if I wasn't already before), and I only hope that he can learn to shape his closure better in future movies to come.

-Written by Cole Pollyea

Jesse's Thoughts: Oliver Stone was the perfect director to helm a film about the horrors and brutality of the Vietnam War. Being a Vietnam vet himself, he was able to bring exquisite period detail to every frame thus garnering a well deserved Oscar for best director at the 1990 Academy Awards. With all that being said, Born On The Fourth Of July is one of Stone's best films, but everything in it takes a back seat to Tom Cruise's powerful, blistering performance as Ron Kovic, a soldier who was wounded in a dogfight and lost all feeling from the mid-chest down. Based on a true story, Cruise commands the screen and has never been this good in a film since. He hits a home run, better yet, a total grand slam.