Well guys, I started. After coming up with this idea last week, I actually got around to watching a movie. After crafting my new and improved Movie List, I chose to watch Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July. It can be streamed with HBOGO.
The film is based on the autobiography of the same name by Ron Kovic. It stars Tom Cruise as Ron Kovic. The film starts with Ronnie as a child on Long Island in the 1950s. From an early age, he wants to serve his country. When Ronnie is a teenager, America enters Vietnam. While watching JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” speech, Ronnie’s mom says to him, “I had a dream, Ronnie, the other night, and you were speaking to a large crowd just like him. And you were saying great things.” This quote was a bit on the nose for my taste. It was so obvious that I don’t think it can qualify as foreshadowing, and I knew this only from reading the HBO description of the movie.
Inspired by JFK’s speech, Ronnie enlists in the Marines and plans to ship out as soon as he can (right after he graduates). Before he graduates though, there needs to be a corny romantic plot. Ronnie asks his childhood crush Donna to prom, but she is going with someone else because she thought he was taking someone else. Ronnie decides to skip the prom and pack for boot camp, only to run to the high school in the rain to share one dance with Donna. Cue the barfing. This romantic subplot was fictionalized to add drama to the story and his love for Donna comes back later in the movie. However the way it comes back actually makes Ronnie look less in control. But more on that later.
We next see Ron in Vietnam. He is there on his second tour and is a squad leader. He and his squad shot at the Viet Cong because they see rifles. After further investigation, they find that the Viet Cong used innocent villagers as shields. Ron sees the devastation that he caused to women and children and feels sick. Everything becomes a blur for him. They leave the village and take cover in sand dunes. In his confusion, he accidentally shoots someone from his squad, thinking it is the enemy. He feels really guilty and tells his commanding officer, who tells him that he’s lying. Then, we move into another fight sequence where their battalion is ambushed. Ron is shot in the heel. Instead of playing dead, he continues to shoot at the enemy, and is shot again through the chest. Someone from his squad carries him to safety.
We next see Ron in a makeshift hospital in Vietnam. They are just trying to stabilize him enough to keep him alive. They then send him to a VA hospital in New York. It is a horrible place, overrun with rats. The quality of care is appalling. I have heard this about VA hospitals before, but to see a visual representation really hit me hard. At the hospital, Ron finds out that he is paralyzed from the chest down. He is determined to get better. He tries to walk using crutches on his arms, but he falls over and they almost need to amputate his legs. This idea freaks him out (even though his legs are currently serving no function) and they are ultimately able to save his legs. Eventually, it is time for him to go home with his family.
Back with his family, Ron has a difficult time integrating. People don’t know how to talk to him. He also starts to question whether or not it would have been better for him to die in Vietnam. I also began to question this. I wondered how I would feel in the situation. Never able to have a normal life again, not able to be fully independent, not able to have a family, and always living with the guilt of the war. He starts drinking a lot, and becomes a burden on his family, so they kick him out. He goes to Mexico to a place where there are a lot of paralyzed Vietnam veterans. I found this a useless digression in the film. The big highlight is that Ron has sex with a hooker. Then he realizes that he is in a horrible place and goes back to his family.
We next see Ronnie making a stop to speak with the family of the person in his squad that he killed. This did not happen in real life, but was used to show the internal struggle Ron felt. It wasn’t super eventful except for clearing Ron’s conscience.
Then we see Ron go to visit Donna at her college. She is very anti-war and is organizing a rally in the wake of the Kent State shootings. Ron decides to join her because he likes her. After the events with Donna, time jumps forward 4 years to Ron speaking to the Democratic Convention about stopping the war. It made me angry that the movie makes it look like Ron became a peace activist for Donna, which was not really the case. It makes him seem less committed to the cause and just gave me a bad taste in my mouth.
Overall, the movie was fine, but not my favorite. It was very uneven with the storytelling, and it moved very slow at times. I would maybe recommend it to someone very interested in war movies.
~Allison
Movies Before You Die 