A moving story, told with some passion though suffering from Stone's increasingly florid and overblown style...

Rating: 8/10 (29 May 2005)

Everything that people love and detest about Oliver Stone's films is in full flower hereambitious theme, strengthen visual style, undisguised political biases
The film is also an important turning point in Tom Cruise's career, completing his transformation from rising star to serious actor He received his first Academy Award nomination for his role as antiwar activist and Vietnam veteran Though Ron Kovic's story is presented as a distillation of the political and a violent social commotion that America went through from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies... At heart, it's propaganda
Stone begins the story as a twisted cinematic version with boys playing war in suburban woods It's Massapequa, Long Island, 1956
Ron Kovic grows up as a typical American white kid who believes in God, country, sports, and sex His father's (Raymond J. Barry) leaving his forceful mother (Caroline Kava) as the dominant personality in the home To Ron, she's a repressive slave driver who sets a standard he can never measure up to That, in part, is why he enlists in the Marines, straight out of high school Cut to the Cua Viet River, October 1967, where Sgt. Kovic is in his second tour
The short vision of Vietnam that Stone presents here is even more surreal and horrifying than the violence in "Platoon." An attack on a village is a disaster, and the Marines' retreat from it is even worse for Kovic That nightmare is settled when Kovic is seriously wounded, sent to a MASH unit, and then to a Bronx Veteran's Administration hospital...
Paralyzed from the waist down, Kovic sank into a deep depression From that moment, the next hour or so is a steep downward spiral of self-pity, drunkenness, anger, misery, and, most important, guilt over one incident for which he cannot forgive himself It's honest, unflattering, and ugly
Cruise's performance is one of his best, capturing both the cocky, insecure young man and the haunted veteranThe motion picture is never boring and, until the last reel, the action moves forcefully
If Stone had elected in the middle section to spend less time rolling about with pleasure in Mexican fleshpots and to pay more attention to Kovic's full development, he might have created the antiwar epic he was aiming for, revealing the physical and psychological costs of one of the most tragic events in history