Born On The Fourth Of July (HD-DVD)
Picture:
B+ Sound: B Extras: C+ Film: B
In his
rise as one of the most important directors alive, Oliver Stone decided to
adapt Ron Kovic’s autobiography about his experience in Vietnam, his blind
faith prior to going and the terrible aftermath that made him fight the
undeclared war at great personal cost to himself. The film was made as a sort of flipside to
his hugely successful Platoon (1986)
and the real coup of Born On The Fourth
Of July (1989) is that Stone landed Tom Cruise to play Kovic.
Cruise
was looking for respectability and got it, delivering another career-changing
performance as a young man who loves his country so much, he does not need to
be drafted since he simply signs up.
Told chronologically and without the pretense of flashback, we see the
Kovic Family and their happy life together.
After his stint in Nam, he returns and finds he really cannot go home
again as the country is in upheaval.
Once a
young man who believed all the propaganda about conformity without thinking
about, he is paralyzed and can no longer walk.
Wheelchair-bound, he has to deal with his dysfunctional family, denial
about exactly how things happened and slowly becomes politicized when he cannot
live a lie anymore as the country erupts over how unacceptable the Vietnam
situation is.
At 145
minutes, the film never seems that long and is one of Stone’s better films as
he was gaining power as an important auteur in the middle of the first
Reagan/Bush years. Cruise received a
Best Actor Oscar nomination and proved that he could carry a serious film like
this on his own and not just hold his own with great actors like Paul Newman
and Dustin Hoffman. It was also one of
the best films in a very bad year like 1989 and has aged well. Kyra Sedgwick, Frank Whaley, Caroline Kava,
Tom Berenger, Stephen Baldwin and Willem Dafoe also star.
The 1080p
VC-1 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image was shot by Director of Photography
Robert Richardson, in real anamorphic Panavision and it looks good in this fine
transfer. Before it fell apart, the
Stone/Richardson collaboration was one of the best, most distinct in the
business. These compositions are amazing
and this one looked so good, they made 70mm blow-ups of it. Color is consistent, depth is good and detail
is better than all previous versions of the film.
Those
70mm prints had 4.1 Dolby magnetic stereo mixes, while the 35mm prints offered
Dolby advanced SR (Spectral Recording) analog system. The film was issued in standard Dolby Digital
5.1 on DVD, plus a special DTS-only DVD that was good, if not great. That same upgraded sound mix is here only in Dolby
Digital Plus 5.1 and hold sup decently for its age, though not even the best
sound mix from its time. John Williams
delivered one of his most ironic scores, which sounds very good here.
The only
extras are an NBC News piece on the film and solid feature length audio
commentary track by Stone.
When the
film was released, there was this feeling that it captured the past so well
with the hope that we would not make the same mistakes ever again, but we now
know that mistakes have been repeated and on some ways on purpose as if that
would make Vietnam Syndrome go away.
Instead, it compounded it and with silly controversies surrounding
Cruise and even Stone, the film is not as remembered as it should be. Now more important than ever, despite some
limits and minor flaws (like the melodrama preventing it from going as far as
it should have politically), Born On The
Fourth Of July is an important testament to the true history of what
happened then, what has happened now (even though the government literally has
had the returning injured censored by a too-willing national media) and shows
how great Stone was before he was eclipsed by Michael Moore as the director
most able to take the hardest look at a U.S.A. that is and does not have to
be. This HD-DVD more than does justice
to that vision.
- Nicholas Sheffo
