Born on the Fourth of July | | Cast : | Tom Cruise | | Director : | Oliver Stone | | Studio : | Universal Studios Ho | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | December 20, 1989 | | DVD Released Date : | May 31, 2005 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | June 23, 2005 | | Summary | Apparently I'm the minority - I didn't like it. | Content
 | To say that Cruise and Stone are seasoned is an understatement, so I expected this to be a classic that I had been missing for the last 15 years. Well, not really.
This film was really exhausting for me. I thought it was too long, and I started to lose interest about 90 minutes in. It actually took two sittings for me to be able to finish it. The performance that Cruise offers is outstanding, but the not-so-subtle political narrative really struck me as routine and very predictable for Hollywood.
The film skips a large portion toward the end in which Cruise emerges as a notable public speaker, but it isn't explained how or why. The film concludes, framing his story as a triumph of character not too dissimilar from Forrest Gump. I wish I had enjoyed it more.
Top Gun and The Color of Money remain my choice Cruise films from the 80's. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 18, 2005 | | Summary | Amazing... | Content
| Good movies entertain. They make you laugh and cry. Great movies leave a mark on you. You think about the movie, what it means, and you talk about it for days. It changes your perception of things on many levels. This is one those movies. I am still in awe of the movie that I have watched maybe 6 times. Oliver Stone and Tom Cruise have brought a brilliant story about the war to life.
First of, this is not exactly a war movie, but it revolves around a war. It shows the effects of the war to the people who were in it and the general public who have no idea what exactly is going on. This is a story of Ron Kovic, an all-American kid from Long Island. He is full of passion for his country and he believes in serving his country, not caring whether he dies in the process. He eagerly enrolls in the Marine Corp and before he knows it, he is sent to Vietnam fighting in the front line. Some things happen there that leaves a huge impact on Ron and also he was paralyzed from a battle with the communists. He finds himself in a hospital and they have to amputate his legs. He then returns home to find that not everyone sees eye to eye on the war situation in Vietnam, many look at him with embarassment and repulse. In an instant, he had gone from hero to zero.
What really grabbed me about this movie was the story. It doesn't show the war in detail, but more what the war does to it's soldiers and the people involved. It's amazing how they show things from an individual's point of view. It shows the terrible effects of war that you just cannot watch on CNN. Through this movie, it opened my eyes that wars do not just leave towns/cities in destruction or leave people killed...it also effects the people who survived. The trauma and the pain they go through. It's hard to just pick up where you left. And yeah, everyone will be there when things are going well, but who'll be left when things go awry? When you lose your legs and need nursing?
I have to say, kudos to Cruise for giving an Oscar-worthy performance. I honestly felt he deserved the statuette for this role. It's hard to imagine anyone else pulling of the part as perfectly as he did. From humble and innocent beginnings, to a torn and desperate man left scarred for life. You can feel the emotion he's going through all the way. It's not hard to imagine yourself doing the same if you were in his shoes. This role defined Tom Cruise as an actor, and he has definitely earned a place in my book as one of the best actors around. The movie also has a slew of talented actors but most appear in brief sequences but due to Cruise's brilliant performance, it doesn't really matter.
Oliver Stone is one of the great directors of our time (other than Alexander) so his direction of this movie is no surprise, it's practically flawless. He does it so well, each scene is classic and invokes emotion that movies rarely create. And the score of the movie by John Williams is also fantastic. The music that appears in the parade earlier on in the movie, when the war veterans are marching by with broken legs and arms...kinda like a preview of things to come, brilliant!
This movie will be remembered for a long time and it really makes you sad that wars are still going on around the world. You wish that those people could watch movies like this and realize that it destroys something more than nations or buildings, it destroys the very essence of life. To quote from Ron Kovic, "People say that if you don't love America, then get the hell out. Well, I love America". If you haven't watched this movie, you are missing something important in American cinema. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 14, 2005 | | Summary | The second-best movie of all time. | Content
| Based on the autobiography of Ron Kovic, this heart-wrenching, painful film is so extremely well done that if it were steak it would be burnt beyond recognition. Stone's directing, for which he won an Oscar, is flawless.
In his role, Tom Cruise plays a young, ambitious, patriotic Ron Kovic, itching to serve in Vietnam and fight for Democracy and American values. He leaves behind his girlfriend and his family for a chaotic, hellish war. His platoon kills women and children. With the heat and dust muddling his vision and the steady staccato of gunshots impairing his senses, Kovic fatally shoots one of his own men. On a similar day, a half-crazed, expletive-screaming Kovic is wounded. At a hospital overrun by the dying, Kovic's last rights are administered. You can see everything on Cruise's face: guilt, pain, fear and acceptance of death.
But he doesn't die; instead, he returns home a paralyzed misfit. His agonizing trials at home and in Mexico, where he goes to recuperate, follow. And just when it seems that Kovic will never overcome the painful memory of Vietnam and many missed opportunities, he realizes that bravery isn't jumping in uninformed to the misguided war of attrition. Ron Kovic shows what it is to be a true American: to fight for the truth. |
| Rating | | | Date | February 22, 2005 | | Summary | Reality hurts | Content
| When you see a war veteran campaigning against the very war in which he was willing to die once, you begin to have second thoughts about the intent behind the war. Many Americans went deep into this deliberation when veterans like Ron Kovic went on record questioning the wisdom behind US's offensive against Vietnam. Regardless of historical outcome of the war, the question will haunt USA forever -was the Vietnam War a noble and just cause. Your answer could be anything depending upon your political and ideological preferences, but the reality of thousands who lost their lives and limbs continues to hurt.
Oliver Stone's Born on Fourth of July - based on the true story of Ron Kovic - takes the audience through the triumph and trauma of a crusader who went from one side of the war debate to the other. Ron wanted to fight for his country and stop the evil force of communism dead in its tracks. He went to Vietnam to defend his nation but came back soon, injured and doomed to suffer further. In the inadequately equipped hospital, his dreamer instincts crashed against the harsh realities of political ambivalence, not for the first time though.
Over next eight years that are depicted in this masterpiece, the character of Ron Kovic (played by Tom Cruise with unprecedented brilliance) goes through the trauma of knowing that no one will "love him now", that even his own sibling is not on the same side of ideology, that the government had more pressing issues than taking good care of war veterans, that his countrymen did not necessarily endorse of his view point. The reality that he killed a soldier from his own army, the reality that he was the unfortunate one to butcher children and women in Vietnam, the reality that he would not be able to father a child, the reality of his realization that his government had made a wrong case for the war - it all kept gnawing at his conscience. It kept gnawing him until he opened up to speak about what was wrong about this war. Thus `ended' the patriotic fervor of a driven person, but he continued his passion as an antiwar activist.
Born on Fourth of July may have been the story of one Ron Kovic, but there are many others whose sentiments would echo with this veteran's. At the end, there is no easy way out of this debate. War always comes with its baggage of pain, trauma and hurt. Whether Vietnam was a mistake or not - the arguments would go on forever. So would the history of people who aspired to be motivated by JFK's historical urge - Ask not what your country can do for you, See what you can do for your country - only to realize that in every war there is only one casualty - the human spirit. The pangs of this reality hurt, just does as their own reality.
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| Rating | | | Date | January 30, 2005 | | Summary | Oliver Stone grinds his axe fine | Content
| I didn't want to like this movie. I'm usually resistant to any film whose director grinds an ax so relentlessly as Oliver Stone has been known to, and never so obviously as with this film. But I recently ran across the NY Times list of 1000 best films, and "Born On the Fourth of July" is listed there. While any such list is naturally debatable, it caused me to want to see more of those on the list that I hadn't seen, and a satellite channel was running this film at a convenient time. I must say, the excellence of Stone's craftsmanship, and of Tom Cruise's performance, wore down my resistance to his message, although it took almost half of this lengthy biopic to get past my defenses.
What we have here is the true story of a man whose birthday coincides with that of his country, a young man who was properly raised to love all things American. His patriotism led him to volunteer for the Marine Corps and the Vietnam war in the late 1960s, where everything he had ever believed was challenged in the strongest possible terms. The watershed events that finally moved him from traditional all-out American patriot to an American who loves his country but distrusts the government and opposes war, however, were events that mostly followed that famously horrifying war, and said events were often as horrifying in their own way as the things he experienced in Vietnam.
This truly is an excellent film, no doubt about it. Stone, a Vietnam vet himself, frames his story expertly, brings out superb performances from all of his players, and included Mr. Kovic (on whose autobiographical book this film is based) at every stage of the production. The pacing of the tale is smooth and understandable for its nearly 2-1/2 hour length, and the viewer never has a serious problem wondering where Cruise's character is coming from emotionally or intellectually.
"Born On the Fourth of July" has proven to be the capstone of Oliver Stone's career, and was the performance that took Tom Cruise from teen idol to respected actor. No wonder, as Cruise at times does more in this film with a look than he had been able to accomplish with pages of dialogue earlier in his career.
As with almost any 'Nam film, the gore of battle and over-the-top filthy language of its scarred survivors mean that viewing it is more of a cathartic experience than a pleasant one, but beyond that my only nitpick is that one scene has some vets listening to Don McLean's "American Pie" in 1968, three years before the song was recorded. With that minor caveat, the film has given me a lot to think about. While I don't agree with Stone's politics, there is no question that he, Kovic, and others have arrived at their perspective honestly and forcefully, and this film serves as a fine record of a time in our country's history when we fought a second civil war of sorts. Men like Stone and Kovic are the living casualties of that time, and they deserve our respect. |
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