Beautiful work and very few flaws

Rating: 8/10 (10 August 2017)

The first movie I saw that stars Tom Cruise is A Few Good Men. I hated that movie, and I think Tom Cruise is terrible in it. The major reason for me to hate that film is the blatantly simple thematic message of patriotism, and I thought Tom Cruise was bad because his character was just an archetype already used in thousands of other pictures and books before. The things I hate about A Few Good Men made me nervous in the first twenty minutes of Born On the Fourth of July, because it seems that this is another one of those movies that boast about the American patriotism simple-mindedly, with a most ordinary lead character giving out okay performance. Thank god the movie proved me wrong. Tom Cruise is amazing in this movie. It takes about five minutes to know if someone is talented in acting, and Tom Cruise has about ten of those five minutes in the movie. I don't know any other character's name, but most are pretty good. Another thing about the characters is that this is a very character-driven story, which makes every other character apart from Tom Cruise having only a minor role. This might be the reason for people to think the movie is not very fleshed out, because not even one character stays to the end: his first love leaves him, his fellow soldiers either die or go missing, his friends only appear from scene to scene, and his parents disappear towards the end. However, all the characters have clear motivations, and their appearance always helps convey the thematic message. The camera work is astonishing. The film plays with the lighting very well, to the point of exemplary. Also the director loves to use hand-held extreme close-up, and most of them are very well-handled. I would say one or two scenes do not work. The ending is obviously rushed, but it does not ruin the movie. Overall I would have one point off for the problems, and I definitely recommend it as a war/identity/patriotism genre movie.