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Born on the Fourth of July (Special Edition) |
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Born on the Fourth of July (Special Edition)
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by Universal Studios
Sales Rank: 7501
Price: $6.49
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The biography of ron kovic. Paralyzed in the vietnam war he becomes an anti-war and pro-human rights political activist after feeling betrayed by the country he fought for. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 10/24/2006 Starring: Tom Cruise Jerry Levine Run time: 145 minutes Rating: R Director: Oliver Stone
Viewer Reviews
Everybody and their brother thinks this is a war film classic. I don't. I grew up in Massapequa, knew Ron Kovic (slightly), hung out at Arthur's Bar, got my hair cut at Sparky The Barber's, I played in Sally's Woods as a kid, and watched God knows how many holiday parades down Broadway. Growing up, they occurred on every major holiday except The Feast of The Assumption.
Massapequa's the kind of place you love and hate at the same time. It's a fly in the amber. The schools are excellent. Businesses like All-American and Krisch's Ice Cream Parlor have been there since 1955 and remain surprisingly unchanged. The town's underlying values remain intact, mostly because the kids that grew up there in the Fifties inherited their parents' houses and have passed them on to their kids now. On the Fourth of July the smoke from "illegal" fireworks is so dense that spy satellites can't penetrate it (this is a documented fact). There's been a spate of new construction, if you can consider a spate to have lasted 25 years, but beyond that, it's still home as I remember it.
So the ersatz Massapequa (a town in Vermont that they dressed up) in this film was a little disconcerting to me: "Lemke Hardware wasn't even on the same street as Krisch's, and Krisch's is Krisch's, not Boyer's!"
Hollywood.
And this wasn't even the original film. The original BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY by Brian DePalma starred Al Pacino and was made, or partly made, in 1978. The Internet Movie Database tells me that the "financing fell through" but I can recall the Pequa Theater marquee showing "Love Story" during some filming. They were actually going to use Massapequa to represent Massapequa in that version.
Actually, the sets don't bother me half as much as Tom Cruise. Pacino would have made this movie a TRUE classic. Cruise is real good at playing the teenaged Ronnie Kovic, but he utterly blows the role once Ronnie Gets His Gun. Cruise spends most of the movie overacting shamelessly, like yelling "Penis, penis, penis!" in a badly-acted "drunk" scene, and turning the heart-rending bitter anger of Ron Kovic's searingly sad book into something like pablum for the ease of audience digestion. We needed grit and despair in this movie. We got Tom Cruise, and not the Tom Cruise of A FEW GOOD MEN or THE LAST SAMURAI, we got the Tom Cruise of Jumping On Oprah's Couch Tom Cruise.
War is hell. It should be presented as such. And so should it's hellish consequences. Like the Massapequa it presents the Ron Kovic of this film is not the real deal.
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Born on the Fourth of July (Special Edition)
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