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Born on the Fourth of July by Richard Natale Born on the Fourth of July dabbles in its own brand of macho heroics, but because the director (Oliver Stone) has chosen the right actor (Tom Cruise) for the material, our resistance is overcome. Many of us have forgotten that Tom Cruise first came to our attention as an actor in the film Taps, in which, as a deranged cadet, he played against his pretty boy looks. Only afterwards did he develop into a slick movie star via the boxoffice smashes Top Gun and Cocktail. It wasn't until last year's Rain Man that he again played an unlikable character. (In The Color of Money he just came off as a bit of a creep.) And then he was overshadowed by Dustin Hoffman, though playing straight man to Hoffman's autistic savant was not as easy as Cruise made it appear. Cruise is not likely to be overlooked in Born. Oliver Stone has given him what is known in the acting vernacular as "the part of a lifetime." And Cruise comes across. It's a brave, thoughtful, expansive performance. As Ron Kovic, the paraplegic Vietnam veteran whose true story this is, he makes the spiritual journey from all-American boy to embittered wounded soldier to anti-war activist. Everything that could have gone wrong in presenting this odyssey doesn't, largely due to the symbiosis between Cruise and Stone (and Kovic who co-wrote the screenplay with Stone). The camera loves Cruise--and Stone knows it. With Stone's support, Cruise can dare us not to like him--He's such a winning screen presence there's no danger of alienating the audience (which was the problem Stone had with James Woods in Salvador). PAGE 1 | 2 |
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In turn, Cruise keeps Stone from running amok, as this director has a tendency to do even in his best films. Born is as deeply felt as Platoon, as graphic and unrelenting as Salvador, but it's less manipulative than the former and more dramatically integrated than the latter, because Cruise anchors the movie. All the action emanates from Kovic's character, and we have such natural empathy for him that we can accept even the story's more excessive moments. There are still annoying patches of preachiness, but Stone is gradually starting to trust his audience. His pulp sensibility achieves a real rhythm here, even in moments when the movie goes haywire, as in a drunken fight between Cruise and Willem Dafoe, both in wheelchairs out in the desert, that is as wacko as anything Stone has ever done. There is genuine intimacy in Born, which works best within scenes that take place in confined spaces, particularly those of Kovic's tortured home life after he returns from Vietnam and the horrifying sequences in the Veteran's Administration hospital. These scenes are showy, but they have an emotional veracity that is refreshing in a Stone film--true sentiment has always been the director's Achille's heel. The war scenes too are well executed, with greater assuredness and less pretension than Platoon. The compositions are simpler, more direct, and for that reason, more immediate. The marriage of Cruise and Stone is a lucky break for both of them. Because of their harmonious union, Born on the Fourth of July is the only film of the "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" trio that doesn't seem musty and archaic. Through the eyes of one man, Stone explores a range of male behavior and questions the validity of that behavior every step of the way. And for that reason, Born on the Fourth of July comes off as more courageous than any of Stone's other, more overtly macho films. What did you think of this movie? Sound off in the Movie Forum. PAGE 1 | 2 |