Geboren am 4. Juli

Tom Cruise gives a great performance as Ron Kovic, a veteran who virtually lost everything, including his legs, fighting in Vietnam. After his return, he becomes an advocate against the war. Both Oliver Stone, the director, and Ron Kovic, the writer both served in the war.

Stone gives us a gruesome inside look into the horrors of war, including the return to civilian life after. The return for many was difficult, leading many to commit or attempt suicide. The country they came back to was changed was ungrateful (at the time) of their service, slamming them as "baby killers" and such. They came back to their fellow citizens who were against the war. Some veterans were, as well. Kovic was one.

After his return, Kovic championed for human rights and fought against the Vietnam war. Eventually, he wrote the book in which this film was based. Every day, especially July 4th, thank a veteran for their service, it wasn't always their choice to go fight. Nor, were all conscientious objectors who got out of going.

Thank you to all veterans!!

"Born on the Fourth of July" is a film based on the real-life experiences of Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic (Tom Cruise in an Oscar-nominated role). As a young man he feels that Vietnam is just another battleground for the United States. Even after he returns home paralyzed from the waist down, he still feels that Vietnam is important and that if you do not support the fighting then you should leave America. However, he has a change of heart and becomes an anti-war activist who realizes that one gets nothing out of combat but heartache and sorrow. Oliver Stone's screenplay is pretty strong, but it is his unrelenting direction that makes the material work throughout. Tom Cruise established himself as a high-class actor and the film stays above water because of that fact. The lack of character support does impede the progress of the film though. Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger, and Kyra Sedgwick make somewhat token appearances and the impact of their screen-time is all minimal. Cruise's character dominates the film. This is both the film's strong point and weak point. All in all a strong film, but could have been so much more. 4 out of 5 stars.

I remember when i first watched this film I became totally absorbed in it. I had to search out songs that I heard in the move.....I had to see other Vietnam movies again.....I had to watch other Stone movies. Its a superb film. Cruise gives the best peformance he ever will in a film as Kovic.....the golden boy who comes home paralysed and confused at the way his country is reacting to Vietnam. Some of the scenes in the film are very disturbing but the ones that affected me the deepest were not any battle scenes. When Ron comes home and looks at himself as a young boy in his wrestling kit was almost unbearable to watch. Also, the scene when he is drunk in the bar and comes out of his wheelchair had me turning away from the screen. This is a true epic film and the support cast and soundtrack are also superb. 5/5 easily.

I avoided this when it came out in 1989 having seen Coming Home (1978) and not wanting to revisit the theme of paraplegic sexual dysfunction and frustration. I also didn't want to reprise the bloody horror of our involvement in the war in Vietnam that I knew Oliver Stone was going to serve up. And Tom Cruise as Ron Kovic? I just didn't think it would work. Well, my preconceptions were wrong. First of all, for those who think that Tom Cruise is just another pretty boy (which was basically my opinion), this movie sets that mistaken notion to rest. He is nothing short of brilliant in a role that is enormously demanding--physically, mentally, artistically, and emotionally. I don't see how anybody could play that role and still be the same person. Someday in his memoirs, Tom Cruise is going to talk about being Ron Kovic as directed by Oliver Stone. And second, Stone's treatment of the sex life of Viet Vets in wheelchairs is absolutely without sentimentality or silver lining. There are no rose petals and no soft pedaling. There was no Jane Fonda, as in Coming Home, to play an angel of love. Instead the high school girl friend understandably went her own way, and love became something you bought if you could afford it. And third, Stone's depiction of America--and this movie really is about America, from the 1950s to the 1970s--from the pseudo-innocence of childhood war games and 4th of July parades down Main street USA to having your guts spilled in a foreign land and your brothers-in-arms being sent home in body bags--was as indelible as black ink on white parchment. He takes us from proud moms and patriotic homilies to the shameful neglect in our Veteran's hospitals to the bloody clashes between anti-war demonstrators and the police outside convention halls where reveling conventioneers wave flags and mouth phony slogans. I have seen most of Stone's work and as far as fidelity to authentic detail and sustained concentration, this is his best. There are a thousand details that Stone got exactly right, from Dalton Trumbo's paperback novel of a paraplegic from WW I, Johnny Got His Gun, that sat on a tray near Kovic's hospital bed, to the black medic telling him that there was a more important war going on at the same time as the Vietnam war, namely the civil rights movement, to a mother throwing her son out of the house when he no longer fulfilled her trophy case vision of what her son ought to be, to Willem DaFoe's remark about what you have to do sexually when nothing in the middle moves. Also striking were some of the scenes. In particular, the confession scene at the home of the boy Kovic accidentally shot; the Mexican brothel scene of sex/love desperation, the drunken scene at the pool hall bar and the pretty girl's face he touches, and then the drunken, hate-filled rage against his mother, and of course the savage hospital scenes--these and some others were deeply moving and likely to haunt me for many years to come. Of course, as usual, Oliver Stone's political message weighed heavily upon his artistic purpose. Straight-laced conservatives will find his portrait of America one-sided and offensive and something they'd rather forget. But I imagine that the guys who fought in Vietnam and managed to get back somehow and see this movie, will find it redemptive. Certainly to watch Ron Kovic, just an ordinary Joe who believed in his country and the sentiments of John Wayne movies and comic book heroics, go from a depressed, enraged, drug-addled waste of a human being to an enlightened, focused, articulate, and ultimately triumphant spokesman for the anti-war movement, for veterans, and the disabled was wonderful to see. As Stone reminds us, Kovic really did become the hero that his misguided mother dreamed he would be. No other Vietnam war movie haunts me like this one. There is something about coming back less than whole that is worse than not coming back at all that eats away at our consciousness. And yet in the end there is here displayed the triumph of the human will and a story about how a man might find redemption in the most deplorable of circumstances. --Dennis Littrell, author of "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!"

Recently I watched for the second time. A first class depiction of the Vietnam War era. Tom Cruise starred as Ron Covic. Character developments were masterful as father, mother, friends, brothers and sisters etc. Very good job done by Oliver Stone.