Cloak & Dagger

I first saw Cloak and Dagger when a substitute teacher showed it to our 6th grade class. It was the coolest movie I'd ever seen because it was an action movie about kids who solve a mystery and save the day.

Henry Thomas is Davey Osbourne. His entire life is an imaginary world of secret spies. And to aid in his games of eluding spies and dodging secret plans of assasination, Davey defers to his wartime hero, Jack Flack, an action hero that he has turned into an imaginary playmate as well as a father figure guidance to make up for an absentee father.

But Davey soons finds himself in trouble as the imaginary world becomes a reality when he witnesses a shooting in a stairwell. But, before the victim draws his last breath, he hands Davey a Cloak & Dagger video cartridge that contains top secret plans. And, while the adults think he is just playing another game, Davey and his sassy friend Kim and Jack Flack all try to solve the crime.

It is a great movie in part because you get a peak at the imagination of a twelve-year-old-boy and, once again, because a few clever kids get to save the day. It definitely looked like a fun movie to make.

Short and sweet: I loved this movie as a kid--now I'm an adult and I still love it. Yes, the computers and games are horribly dated. Heck, my computer from two years ago is horribly dated. That doesn't change the fact that this is a solid, exciting movie which is appropriate for most school-age children without being dumb or talking down to them. I know there's nostalgia involved in this, but kids movies have gone downhill since the '80's. We had The NeverEnding Story, Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, The Secret of Nimh, The Goonies, Cloak & Dagger...what do kids today have? See Spot Run. ANYWAY, this is a good movie, your kids will probably like it (if only to see what video games were like in the dark ages) and you'll like it, too.

CLOAK & DAGGER is a wonderful film from the '80s, a touching story about a boy who has an overdeveloped imagination, largely due to his mother being dead and his father being a career military man who often seems too busy for his son. The boy, Davey, has an imaginary friend by the name of Jack Flack who looks just like his dad. His imaginary spy games and tall tales tend to get on his father's nerves, and there is talk of sending him to a psychiatrist. When Davey actually does witness a horrible murder and is given a video game cartridge with top secret plans encoded inside, he tells his father about it and of course he doesn't believe him. He thinks it's just another one of his son's tall tales. Davey soon realizes that it's up to him and Jack Flack to get out of this alive, and a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues with the spies who are after the game cartridge. This film is great in large part due to the gifts of Dabney Coleman. In a duel performance here, he's equally perfect as both Col. Osborne, buttoned up military guy, and as Jack Flack, the idealized, slicker version of the same man. It's really a great father-son movie, with plenty of action to entertain even the dimmest of children. Obviously inspired by the Bobby Driscoll classic THE WINDOW, CLOAK & DAGGER is a timeless classic for the whole family to enjoy.

I fondly remember this movie and watch it to this day. Its amazing how, as kids, we saw this movie in the 80s where a child is being chased, shot at, almost stabbed, threaten to have his knee caps blown off and shot in the gut, kill 3 guys (2 not by him but caused by him)and be held hostage...and it was a family film rated PG! Still this movie didn't dumb down the dangers of real violence, international terrorism, espionage, and dangerous people. A movie made like this today would make the kid a genius and the bad guys clumsy and stupid. I do miss serious films like this for kids. They never dumbed it down and took the audience seriously. Movies like Poltergeist, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Dark Crystal (Which scared me to death), The Neverending Story, and more always played to the intelligence of the audience. Now all we have is fart jokes and one-note slapstick. When my kids get old enough I do want them to watch these 80s film and learned to appreciate good film-making, something lacking in the 21st century, and by box-office results, the audience notices it too.

Cloak and Dagger was one of my favorite films as a child and continues to hold up well as time passes by. A reminder, in many ways, how much Dabney Coleman's performances marked the years 1980-1985. Henry Thomas remains in many ways one of a scant few child actors to make their mark in multiple films (something Disney has struggled with in recent years, even with the attempts to market mediocre talents like Hilary Duff and Lindsey Lohan). And in an era where role playing games of any nature were looked down on, this portrayed them in a heroic light-"Jack Flack always escapes".

There are a number of skilled character actors who make up the supporting cast for this film, and the script continues to hold up to today's standards. In many ways, this film should act as a template for movie studios looking to craft a story for young audiences, as opposed to "Shark Boy and Lava Girl".