Word: viets
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Cruise has his best shot in a sprawling, squalling film on Hollywood's favorite serious subject. Born on the Fourth of July, directed by Oliver Stone (Platoon), is a Viet Nam melodrama pitched at high decibel level for 2 hr. 23 min. The movie is a jeremiad not just against the war but also against the cultural authorities who encouraged it from the pulpit, the blackboard, the dining-room table and the movie screen. This is an anti-Hollywood movie too; everything that was terrific in, say, Top Gun -- the war, the sex, the male bonding -- is found...
Born on the Fourth of July is the true story of Ron Kovic, a kid from Long Island, N.Y., who got his spine shattered in Viet Nam. Back home he became bitter, questioning his old values of family and patriotism, before convincing himself he could best serve his country as a squad leader in the war against the war. This morality play could be a turnoff if it weren't for Cruise's presence. Says Tom Pollock, head of Universal Pictures, the film's patron: "Tom Cruise is all America's all-American boy. The film's journey is more...
...abuses his parents, his country and himself. This Ron is not a nice person or even, in his hippie garb, a nice-looking one. Moviegoers who expect to find the best of America in Cruise's face will instead discover a haunting mug shot of the nation's Viet Nam nightmare...
...family's suffocatingly pious Catholicism, by the suave belligerence of President Kennedy's Inaugural Address, by his drill sergeant of a high school wrestling coach, by the Marine recruiter looking for a few good men. Men! Ron wants to be one of them, in the nifty new theater called Viet Nam. He hardly has time for a dance at the senior prom -- just a promise of sexual pleasures with sweet Donna (Kyra Sedgwick), deferred till after he has done his duty. After he finds his manhood...
Rather than just applauding what he has done, let us examine why. When Gorbachev came to power he found he was presiding over a military superpower and a Third World economic power. His clients in Cuba, Viet Nam, Ethiopia, Angola and Nicaragua required huge subsidies. Afghanistan was costing lives as well as money. In Eastern Europe the explosive forces of dissent were building dangerously. The stagnant Soviet economy was falling further and further behind the West. Gorbachev's only option was to reform at home and retrench abroad...