Enough to radicalize anyone

Rating: 8/10 (6 July 2014)

Born On The 4th Of July using that line from George M. Cohan's Yankee Doodle Dandy tells the story of Ron Kovic, Vietnam Marine veteran who gradually evolved into an anti-war activist after his Vietnam experience. Tom Cruise played the lead and got an Oscar nomination for his performance.
At the time it was considered quite daring for Oliver Stone to cast Cruise in this film. Up to that point Tom Cruise had done little but Brat Pack style films appealing to his adoring female fans. I think he showed promise as an actor in All The Right Moves and I think Stone saw that film and saw the same thing.
As this film opens in 1961 we see young Ron Kovic taking in the words of newly inaugurated president John F. Kennedy about asking what you can do for your country and deciding to enlist in the Marines. Kennedy upped the commitment to 20,000.00 troops as opposed to a few hundred advisers. Later on he might have been rethinking the commitment, but we'll never know and that's a subject for another film. In fact in his JFK film Oliver Stone does touch on that subject.
The closest thing to the Vietnam experience that the US ever had was the Filipino insurrection in terms of the type of warfare waged. Not too many were alive in the Sixties who remembered that. The commitment was there, but just who and where was the enemy? Vietnamese wanted to settle their own country's destiny, but like so many others it was caught between the two Cold War rivals.
Before he received his wounds that made him a paraplegic Cruise sees a whole lot in Vietnam that makes him wonder just why we're there. But he's a middle class kid from Long Island who's been brought up with certain values among them not to question the aims and intentions of American leadership. After the Vietnam experience the film becomes his realization that he and comrades might not have had any business there in the first place. That's enough to radicalize anyone.
Some other performances to single out are Raymond Barry and Caroline Kava as Cruise's parents. Especially Kava who is a strict Catholic and does not allow questioning of anything in her household. Kyra Sedgwick is fine as the girl next door who in the end can't marry him because of what will be lacking in their marriage.
On that topic I'm sure Oliver Stone channeled Ernest Hemingway and his creation of Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises. How prescient was Papa Hemingway to write of Kovic's experience a couple of generations earlier. One also wonders what Hemingway might have thought of Kovic's experience against his character Barnes.
Oliver Stone got a Best Director Oscar for Born On The Fourth Of July and the film also got an Oscar for Editing. Plus a flock of other nominations besides the one for Tom Cruise including Best Picture.
Born On The 4th Of July is a valuable piece of cinema and history and a milestone for Oliver Stone and Tom Cruise.