Ron Kovic

Rating: 5/10 (4 December 2013)

Oliver Stone directed this biographical account of Ron Kovic(played by Tom Cruise) who is an impressionable and patriotic youth convinced to enlist after a recruiter makes a stirring speech at his high school. Once there however, he finds the war not so glamorous, but chaotic and awful, where people are shooting blindly, and he is shot and paralyzed from the waist down, and must spend months recuperating in an awful hospital where he is neglected and disrespected. Upon return home, he is a changed man, disrespectful of his parents, and self destructive. After becoming homeless, he later becomes an anti-war activist, eventually protesting at the Republican National convention in the 1970's... Though well-acted by Cruise, Kovic seems too easily caught up in whatever's popular at the time, whether pro or anti war, or conservative vs. liberal, and film becomes overly self-righteous as a result, especially with the heavily polemic finale.