Born on the Fourth of July

Hollywood has a complicated relationship with the Vietnam War. On the one side you have John Wayne championing it with his pro-war film The Green Berets and on the other end of the spectrum there is Jane Fonda drawing hatred for traveling to North Vietnam and getting photographed striding an anti-aircraft gun. Opinions were hot all throughout that war and long afterwards as America’s young men came home wounded both physically and mentally and found themselves spit on by protesters who called them baby killers and murderers. This was not the same return home that WWII vets received when they returned and, to add insult to injury, the government cut expenses badly needed to treat the wounded who sacrificed their all for their country. How does one dramatize that hot button topic without taking a side in the battle waging at home? You can’t and that is why films about that war are either anti-war or skewed with a blind eye towards what was really going on in Vietnam. 

Born on the Fourth of July is a movie created by two Vietnam vets wishing to paint a picture of what had really happened in that war as well as the aftermath back home. The first of these two was Oliver Stone, a film director who had already tackled one side of this subject in his 1986 film Platoon. That movie set out to depict the monstrosities of Vietnam and the things soldiers did over there that no one was talking about after they came home. The second veteran was Ron Kovic, a young man who did two tours in Vietnam and was wounded, losing the use of his lower body including the ability to have children. Ron’s injuries and subsequent disillusion of the government that abandoned him and veterans like him form the basis of his autobiography, Born on the Fourth of July.

The book was auctioned off to movie studios in 1976 and spent years languishing in production hell with Oliver Stone attached to it but losing lead actor Al Pacino and producer Martin Bregman. It wasn’t until 1986 and the release of Platoon that interest reignited at Universal Studios for the project. Stone now had some Oscar clout behind his name and he was intent on returning to tackling his personal demons again, this time with the battle on the home front. The film ran over budget and over production schedule and Stone and lead actor Tom Cruise chose to take box office percentages over a flat paycheck for the film, netting them more in the long run than if they had just been paid outright. The film scored big by audiences and critics alike and went on to win several awards including a Best Director award for Oliver Stone. Tom Cruise got his first nomination for acting, too, but lost out to Daniel Day-Lewis who was also playing a wheelchair bound individual in My Left Foot.

The movie suffers from being too distant from the events it is depicting to really resonate with audiences anymore. This would have also been a problem in 1989 when it first released but has only gotten worse in the subsequent years. The book was optioned in 1976, the same year it was published, and had it been made then it would have had more of an emotional impact. By 1989 the war and the anti-war protests were more than a decade in the past. Emotional wounds may never fully heal and Vietnam veterans may struggle and relate to what is on the screen but for the rest of us these events were far enough in the past to no longer sting the way they would have in the 70’s. For people in my generation, born in the mid 70’s but raised in the 80’s, Vietnam was just one of those things people didn’t talk about and it was barely even taught in school. Even now it is a subject that isn’t discussed often enough and those who had first hand experience rarely if ever wanted to talk about it. The movie chooses not to focus on the war itself, with only a few short minutes spent there, which leaves things somewhat emotionally detached. We get one brief scene where a mistake is made, innocent people killed and our main character permanently injured, and then it moves on to lengthy hospital stays and then the return back home. This is not about the war itself. If you want to see Oliver Stone’s views on the war you’ll need to watch Platoon instead. 

What this movie is about is the shifting perspective of Ron Kovic. We get glimpses of his childhood worshipping the soldiers of WWII, his dad included. He and his friends play war games in the woods and later he attends a Fourth of July parade where wounded WWII vets are waved at and cheered, celebrated for their service to their country. This parade is in stark contrast to the one he himself will be in after his tour in Vietnam where spectators are flipping him off rather than celebrating his service. People looked at Vietnam vets with a lot less hero worship than they did WWII vets and Oliver Stone makes sure you understand that clearly. As a senior in High School, Ron is gung ho for joining the marines and serving in Vietnam. He enlists with strong encouragement from his mother, insisting that he’d rather die over there than stay at home and live with the shame. “Ask not what your country can do for you but for what you can do for your country.” Kennedy says on the television and he’s bought into that sentiment whole heartedly. 

Even after Ron comes home, paralyzed and neutered he still believes in his country, getting into arguments with his siblings on the subject and shouting out platitudes like “If you don’t love this country than leave.” He begins drinking heavily, something his religious mother firmly opposes, and eventually breaks down in a drunken tirade sobbing and confessing that he was involved in an attack that killed innocent women and children. He also carries with him the burden that he killed a fellow soldier accidentally during a flurry of gunfire that became too chaotic to see who he was actually firing at. This drunken descent into depression and self-pity prompts his father to send him to Villa Dulce, a Mexican Haven for wounded Vietnam Veterans. There he befriends another paraplegic veteran, Charlie (Willem Dafoe), who spends his evenings with Mexican prostitutes. The two get kicked out of a bar and then get left on the side of the road after Charlie attacks the cab driver taking them to another city. This culminates in a brawl between the two that is both funny and horrifying at the same time. This altercation convinces Ron that he needs to stop drowning in his depression and confront his demons head on.

And this is where the film makes its biggest misstep. Ron takes a bus back home but stops along the way to visit the family of the soldier he killed accidentally. This family has little information about the death of their only son. Ron visits the parents as well as the wife and young child of the soldier. He tells them the truth, getting this guilt off his chest and out in the open but, in doing so, what has he done for this family who probably imagined their son died bravely in battle? Instead, now they may know the truth but will forever be marred by the knowledge that he was killed by accident, a victim of friendly fire. This scene is meant to be cathartic but instead is self-serving. It also was made up entirely and was not a part of the book the real Ron Kovic wrote. 

Born on the Fourth of July was originally a much longer movie that had to be heavily cut down to get the two hour plus runtime. This has left some scenes that would have helped explain the motivations  left on the cutting room floor. The jump from depressed to suddenly becoming an anti-war protestor is abrupt and ill-defined. Watching it now it’s crazy to think that the editing was rewarded with an Oscar because this editing is precisely the reason these motivations are hard to follow. It’s a long movie but a lot of the second half feels too rushed and chopped up. On the plus side it does make me want to read the book so I can fill in the gaps the filmmakers felt were unnecessary to include. The absence of these moments seriously mars the emotional impact this film could have had. Platoon is the better Vietnam War movie even though it is brought down by the callow Charlie Sheen weak performance. The two films make for a compelling look at both sides of that conflict but the earlier film by far is the stronger of the two. Still, Tom Cruise is compelling and the subject is one worth taking a long look at. I just wish it was better put together, especially in the second half.

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: A. Kitman Ho and Oliver Stone

Best Director: Oliver Stone (won)

Best Actor: Tom Cruise

Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium: Oliver Stone and Ron Kovic

Best Cinematography: Robert Richardson

Best Film Editing: David Brenner and Joe Hutshing (won)

Best Original Score: John Williams

Best Sound: Michael Minkler, Gregory H. Watkins, Michael Hoskinson, Wylie Stateman and Tod A. Maitland

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Release Date: December 20, 1989

Running Time: 145 Minutes

Rated R

Starring: Tom Cruise, Kyra Sedgwick, Raymond J. Barry, Jerry Levine, Frank Whaley and Willem Dafoe

Directed By: Oliver Stone