Born On The Fourth Of July (1989)

As today is the fourth of July, kind of a big deal for many of my friends in the USA, I decided to finally check out, and review, Born On The Fourth Of July, a biographical drama co-written and directed by Oliver Stone, based on the experiences of a Vietnam War veteran named Ron Kovic (played here by Tom Cruise).

I doubt anyone who has seen an Oliver Stone movie will be surprised to hear that this is quite a simplistic tale (and anyone interested in this should remember that it is the middle part of a trilogy, consisting of Platoon, this movie, and Heaven & Earth). It starts with a young and idealistic Kovic getting himself enthusiastic about joining the military, eager to do his bit to ensure that his country wins out over an evil enemy, but that enthusiasm starts to wane as he experiences moments of confusion and horror while in battle, eventually being injured in a way that means he may eventually lose one, or both, of his legs. Once back in the USA, Ron's life doesn't get any better. He doesn't feel like the returning hero he envisioned, and his wheelchair-bound status seems to remind people of the human price being paid for a war that actually doesn't feel justified.

This is a Vietnam War movie, at least in part, so there's a decent selection of tunes scattered throughout the soundtrack, some fast and clumsy editing (some of it to help show war on a fairly small scale) as we zip through the main points of a life being shown in cinematic shorthand, and a script that spends a lot of time going around in circles as it keeps coming back to the main point being made. For all his faults, Stone certainly tries to show his passionate support for those watching to right historic wrongs, and he tries to cram so much into the 145-minute runtime that you end up willing him to do better during the few scenes that take more time to show the pain reverberating through the lives of some of the main characters (Kovic included, but he's far from the only one affected).

While I didn't expect this to be subtle, as familiar with Stone's filmography as I am, I did expect it to be good. I remember it being given a huge push when it was first released, a lot of the marketing being based around the fact that this was Tom Cruise taking a break from being Superstar Tom Cruise to show he could be Proper Actor Tom Cruise (which he'd already done successfully with his turn in Rain Man, in my opinion). It's arguably a great decision from Stone to cast him in the main role, considering the pro-military baggage that comes with the star of Top Gun, but it's outweighed by the fact that Cruise simply isn't good enough. While he has since delivered one or two outstanding performances in non-starry roles, I would argue that he wouldn't ever be good enough for this specific role. It's just not a good fit for his particular acting range, which is limited by his sheer Cruise-ness, and there are at least a dozen people who might have done better work here. The rest of the cast includes Kyra Sedgwick, Willem Dafoe, Tom Sizemore, Raymond J. Barry, Caroline Kava, Josh Evans, Frank Whaley, and a few more familiar faces, but all of them are sadly underused.

Worth watching once, if only to ensure that this particular experience isn't forgotten, an experience I believe was shared by many who returned from that war. It's a shame that it's not better though. Other people needed to film this story, but this is what we ended up with. It's very disappointing.

Anyway, this is a reminder of the importance to celebrate your American freedom on the fourth of July. Well, unless you're non-white, LGBTQ+, women, students chained down by debt, averse to the idea of their lifestyle being overruled by religious beliefs, hoping to read books deemed offensive to some, drag queens that deliver wonderful story times, citizens mindful of curtailing and controlling police powers, people still incarcerated for smoking a joint under the three strikes rule you once had, etc, you get the idea. The battleground may be very different, and it's depressing to see it on "home turf", but the need for people to protest against being duped and mistreated by their government is just as strong.

4/10

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Noir-vember: U Turn (1997)

Sean Penn stars here as Bobby Cooper, a drifter who ends up with car problems that leave him stranded in a desert town miles from normality. Bobby soon gets in between two people who seem to be in a relationship (played by Jennifer Lopez and Nick Nolte), but both actually want the other one dead. He may be able to turn his misfortune into a major payday, which would help with his plan to either pay a big debt he owes or run towards a new life. If he somehow has any money left after paying off the ever-growing list of charges that the local mechanic (Billy Bob Thornton) keeps adding to his bill.

Adapting his own novel into screenplay form, writer John Ridley delivers a tale of unpleasantness, madness, and oppressive heat. Whether you like the film or not, director Oliver Stone takes the material and seems to relish the opportunity to spend a couple of hours trapping viewers with characters that we would otherwise be looking to get away from as quickly as possible.

I am not always a big fan of Penn onscreen, but he’s good here, playing someone so irredeemably bad that he doesn’t realise how much he belongs alongside the other characters who are also irredeemably bad. Lopez is a great femme fatale, and I hope she tries this kind of role at least one more time, and Nolte has a lot of fun in his sleazy role. Jon Voight has a small role that has him quite unrecognisable, Powers Boothe is a local Sheriff who may complicate things further, and there’s even one scene that makes good use of the wonderful Laurie Metcalf. There’s also a fun, though relatively inconsequential, plot strand that benefits from enjoyable turns from Claire Danes and Joaquin Phoenix.

You get the usual overdose of flourishes, editing tricks, and visceral nastiness that so often appears in an Oliver Stone movie, but the score from Ennio Morricone does a good job of helping to offset the unrelenting visual assault. The soundtrack, unfortunately, just feels pilfered from other, better, movies. There are definitely moments when this feels like Stone trying to emulate a film-maker he may view as having moved into his realm and stolen his crown (that cocky overthrower being Mr. Tarantino). 

There are a lot of fun moments here, especially anything involving Thornton, but there are times when it is a bit of a slog. It is a gallery of the grotesque, a carnival freakshow. That is fun when you first wander in and enjoy the novelty. It becomes tiresome when you realise you paid your money and are now stuck inside for an overlong presentation of hucksterism and nastiness.

6/10

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Filmstruck Friday: The Hand (1981)

To give you the most basic summary, The Hand is a film about a comic book illustrator named Jon Lansdale (played by Michael Caine) who loses his right hand in a car accident. While struggling to accept his new life with half of his familiar roster of phalanges, and while plodding on through a marriage situation that is clearly in trouble, Jon takes a job at a community college, rents a small cabin in the woods, and seems unaware that his dismembered hand is still moving around, ready to act on his angrier impulses and resolve a number of issues with fatal violence. Unless it's all just the vivid imagination of our main character.

The Hand is a strange film experience, for a number of reasons. The first reason is that it was written and directed by Oliver Stone. He's not necessarily a bad choice, although he makes many bad decisions, but the plot and the way things play out make this the kind of film that you would more readily associate with his friend, Brian De Palma. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was one of those projects that a number of people discussed in theory before Stone got the opportunity to make his film.

Based on a novel that I am unfamiliar with, "The Lizard's Tail" by Marc Brandell, this takes a bit of adjustment on the part of viewers who may be expecting something along the lines of The Beast With Five Fingers, And Now The Screaming Starts! or even Body Parts. It's more in line with The Hands Of Orlac, in the way that it shows the main character starting to unravel, and it's a shame that Stone can't decide on how he wants to play things. Shots of the hand about to commit grave misdeeds are too few and far between while the script doesn't ever have enough interesting statements to make about the clearly-unstable mental state of Caine's character. Things are packed in to the last few scenes, but they're too little too late, and also come as no surprise to viewers who have been waiting for something to be revealed ever since the halfway point.

Caine is fine in his role, and he's called upon to be the focus of most of the scenes. Andrea Marcovicci does well in a much harder role, she's the wife who fell out of love with her husband a long time ago, Bruce McGill is as great as he usually is, and Annie McEnroe appears just in time to derobe and give the main character a temporary ego boost.

If you go into The Hand expecting a schlocky horror movie about a killer hand then you'll probably end up disappointed. If you go into it expecting a portrait of a traumatised and shattered individual then, well, you'll still probably be disappointed, but hopefully less so. This is a Stone project that sees him holding back when he should have just pushed things further, either in terms of the bloodshed or the skewed viewpoint of the main character.

4/10

Here's a film with a much better animated hand.
And Americans can get it here.

Milius (2013)

John Milius has had his hand in more major movies than you could possibly imagine. Every inch the alpha male, he's never been a shy man, which makes him a great subject for a documentary. This particular examination of his life chooses to relate various anecdotes in between allowing other people to heap praise upon the main man.

Francis Ford Coppola, George Hamilton, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, Oliver Stone, Steven Spielberg, Sam Elliott - that's a great list of names. Each and every one of those men have plenty of compliments for the larger-than-life Milius, and every one of them does a good job of reminding viewers just why they should love the cinematic output of someone who is so often neglected by film fans. There are also quotes from his children, and various studio executives, as well as some others (too many for me to mention here).

If I listed all of the films that the man helped to craft I would be here all day, and you would get bored. Suffice to say, Milius is more than just the man who gave Conan The Barbarian a decent movie. But even if he hadn't done much more, that alone would have been enough to win him a fairly big fanbase.

As a look at the man, and his movies, this is good stuff. There are no major revelations here, and no probing insight into the life that turned Milius the boy into Milius the man he is today. Although it doesn't paint Milius as a saint, something that I'm sure he would have strenuously objected to anyway, it does serve as nothing more than an outright celebration of the man, warts and all. There's nothing wrong with that, it's a fun watch and this man deserves to have some more people appreciate his work, but it's worth noting for the benefit of anyone after anything a bit deeper.

Recommended for anyone who grew up with no small amount of affection for macho flicks from the '70s and '80s, from Apocalypse Now to Red Dawn, and from Dirty Harry to Dillinger, this is fun for fans, and anyone who might become a fan after remembering how much pleasure they have derived from the featured films over the years.

7/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Milius-DVD-Joey-Figueroa/dp/B00ECVPP62/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399737995&sr=8-1&keywords=milius

And while shopping around, don't forget my book that I won't let people forget.

The UK version can be bought here - http://www.amazon.co.uk/TJs-Ramshackle-Movie-Guide-Reviews-ebook/dp/B00J9PLT6Q/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395945647&sr=1-3&keywords=movie+guide

And American folks can buy it here - http://www.amazon.com/TJs-Ramshackle-Movie-Guide-Reviews-ebook/dp/B00J9PLT6Q/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395945752&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=TJs+ramshackle+mov

As much as I love the rest of the world, I can't keep up with all of the different links in different territories, but trust me when I say that it should be there on your local Amazon.