A powerful, engaging film.

Rating: Null/10 (9 June 2001)

Ron Kovic, Oliver Stone and Tom Cruise form a creative triumvirate (as story source, director, and lead actor, respectively) in this moving Vietnam War saga. Together they achieve a piece de resistance in filmmaking. Cruise's performance is particularly scintillating in the role of crippled war veteran Kovic. Under the aegis of Stone he efficaciously moves through the vicissitudes of Kovic's life and personal ethos. Cruise's style lends itself well to a character that has one enduring passion that does not diminish in intensity, but does change focus (the strength of purpose is just as strong as he explains to his father why he must go to war as when he denounces the conflict to reporters at the Republican convention).

As for Stone he adroitly avoids trying to parlay the `period piece' aspect of the film, and instead concentrates on the bitter ironies (a friend gives the recently paralyzed Kovic some trite business advice `you've got to walk before you can run') and adumbrations (a man brags that his family has participated in all that nations wars and will continue to as the camera shows his grandson). And by keeping the actual Vietnam combat footage in perspective with the whole of Kovic's experience he avoids making `Platoon II' (not an easy feat by the way considering that Tom Beringer and Willem Defoe play key roles in the movie, and some other cast members of Stone's previous Vietnam epic sneak in and out of scenes)