Ron Kovic's arc or the soul of a torn apart America ...

Rating: 10/10 (30 October 2012)

A young Ron Kovic is on his father's shoulders, and enjoys the 4th of July parade. Ronnie looks quite dull but he's got a beautiful girlfriend named Donna who offers him an original NY cap. It's Ronnie's birthday, his mother tells him with pride-irradiating eyes: "You're my little Yankee Doodle boy". During a night illuminated by the fireworks, Ron and Donna kiss, a privilege that small boys rarely get at 10, but it's Ronnie, Ronnie who makes his baseball team win and victoriously lifts his pumps in the air, so perfect it's unreal.
There is yet a reason why the opening of "Born on the Fourth of July" possesses this disorienting dream-like aspect, for it's too over-the-top from a director like Oliver Stone not to be deliberate. It starts like a fantasy because it's exactly into this that American values were turned after World War II, the idea that whatever America does is right, and any American boy should be proud to defend his country, to win, to be the best. It echoes General Patton's words: "the very idea of losing is detestable for America". Yet Patton fought in a war that, no matter how devastating it was, was necessary. The Vietnam War was not and now, it's a wound forever carved in America's heart, a stain in its soul, for which Oliver Stone's film works on a cathartic level.
Fittingly "Born on the 4th of July", Ron Kovic incarnates the spiritual destruction the Vietnam War applied on America's youth, before it turned into a generation-defining realization. That realization is the emotional core of the film and it's powerfully carried by Tom Cruise's performance. Cruise's good looks always played a significant part in his films because they helped to build a misleading feeling just to be contradicted by the evolution of his character ("Rain Man", "Jerry Maguire"). "Born on the Fourth of July" also features an extraordinary evolution, but in terms of acting, it transcends every other performance from Cruise. As Kovic, he personifies the patriotic enthusiasm of a youth that grew in a star-and-stripe clad cradle and its transformation into anger against the system that fooled them.
And the higher Kovic went in the expression of his patriotism, the harder he fell. What is fascinating in Kovic is that he isn't necessarily perfect before the War; he loses at a wrestling game and sobs like a baby under the booing of a heartless crowd. Kovic is so 'Americanised' that losing a game is as upsetting as losing a war. So when the first recruitment's program for the Marine Corps comes to his school, he takes it as a chance to prove his value. Kovic loves his country and will serve it, even if he has to die. The 'trick' is that he didn't explore the eventuality of ending crippled and that's crucial: when a man lives, he's proud of having done his job, when he dies, he's not here to express any regrets, but on a wheelchair, it's another side of the show he's going to discover.
The film's scope is so big that Stone rightfully keeps the essential from each episode of Kovic's life, especially since "Platoon" was eloquent enough about the war. The fight scenes show that GI killed baby and civilians accidentally but so was it when they killed each other in battles far from the usual epic exaltations. Then, Kovic is shot and spends a long time in the veteran's hospital: one of the film's highlight, an invitation to discover the treatment, crippled soldiers received: the last rites (just in case), bathing in their own filth, incapable to clean themselves, sharing the place with rats. Kovic is told that he can't walk anymore, can't even have children; he endures a rough treatment to prevent amputation. But what he can't stand, more than pain, stink, rats or his disability is one carer's anti-war comment. His condition didn't earn him any respect or compassion, and the worst is yet to come.
Returning at home, Kovic realizes that life has changed, hippies give him the finger; the American flag is burned instead of being proudly raised in the air. "Love it or leave it!" still shouts Kovic in denial. The attitude spread to his Family, his own brother doesn't believe in the war, and the trip to self-awareness doesn't end here. Wherever he goes, Kovic is confronted to disrespect and carelessness, a friend who didn't believe in the War, is doing well in fast-food business, a WWII veteran reminds him he's got no reason to be angry about, he fought, he lost, and gives him the ultimate insult by calling him a traitor. The anger's burning in Kovic's heart reaches its heart-breaking pinnacle when he wakes up his whole family, submerged by his drunkenness, he -for the first time- understands that this war destroyed him, for nothing, because the very America he fought for, is now acting like an ungrateful bitch.
But the courage of Kovic is not to stand alone in his own blindness. During a trip in a Mexican whorehouse where he encounters veterans living in the same condition, he's left alone with a vet played by Willem Dafoe in the desert, they fight, insult, spit on each other, but it's probably the last step before self-awareness. Symbolizing through his character's arc a real revolution in America's society, Kovic becomes the spokesperson of a whole generation against the war. Not because one shouldn't fight for his country, but because there were no values noble enough to fight in Vietnam, to destroy America's spirit, no matter how supposedly 'evil' Communism was, America was no better in that war. Kovic said that who fought there, and Oliver Stone showed that, who fought there, too.
Intelligent, thought provoking and uncompromising, "Born of the Fourth of July" is one of the most important American films, and one of the best of the 80's.