Caroline Kava | Through the Shattered Lens

This 1991 made-for-TV movie opens with a murder in a Brooklyn park. The year is 1979 and a group of teenagers are accosted by two men carrying guns. The men rob the teenagers of their drugs and guns. One person is killed. When the police arrive, almost everyone says that it was too dark to see anything. However, a 15 year-old named Jimmy O’Neill (Tristan Tait) says that he saw the faces of the men.

At the police station, the detective (Mark Metcalf) shows him a picture of a man named Billy Ferro (Zachary Mott) and Jimmy identifies him as one of the gunmen. The detective then produces a picture of a 19 year-old named Bobby McLaughlin (Brendan Fraser) and asks if Bobby was the other man. When Jimmy hesitates, the detective says that McLaughlin has been arrested with Billy in the past.

Of course, the truth of the matter is that, while Bobby has been arrested in the past, he’s never been arrested for anything as serious as murder and he’s never met Billy Ferro. The man who had been arrested in the past with Ferro was named Harold McLaughlin. The detective accidentally grabbed the wrong picture.

Bobby, a high school drop-out who lives with his foster parents (played by Martin Sheen and Caroline Kava), is arrested and charged with second degree murder. It doesn’t matter that Bobby passes a polygraph because the results are not admissible in court. It doesn’t matter what Bobby has an alibi because the prosecutor portrays all of his friends as being a collection of stoners and losers. It doesn’t matter what Bobby has never even met Billy Ferro because Ferro isn’t going to help anyone out, even someone who he knows is being falsely convicted. Bobby is convicted of second degree murder and sent to prison.

For the next seven years, while Bobby tries to survive prison, his foster father attempts to prove his son’s innocence. With the police refusing to help, Bobby’s father is forced to launch his own investigation but it seems like no matter what he discovers, it’s not enough to get Bobby out of prison. Still, neither he nor Bobby gives up. Neither one will accept a system in which you’re guilty until proven innocent….

For most people who choose to watch this film, I imagine it will be because of that “Introducing Brendan Fraser” credit. Fraser gives a very good performance in this film, playing Bobby as basically well-meaning but directionless teenager who finds himself trapped in a nightmare. Of course, the majority of this film is Martin Sheen yelling about the injustice of it all. This is the type of crusader role that Sheen has played often. As was often the case when he was cast in films like this, there’s nothing subtle about Sheen’s performance but it’s not really a role that needs or demands subtlety.

Though this was made-for-television and, as such, is never quite as critical of the system as perhaps it should be (if anything, the film argues that one should trust the system to eventually do the right thing, even if it does so seven years too late), it still shows how one cop’s mistake can ruin an innocent’s man life. It’s all the more effective because it’s based on a true story. Of course, I immediately knew the cop shouldn’t be trusted because he was played by Mark Metcalf. Niedermeyer as a cop? That’s definitely not going to end well.

In 1989, having already won an Oscar for recreating his Vietnam experiences in Platoon, director Oliver Stone returned to the war with Born On The Fourth Of July.

Based on the memoir of anti-war activist Ron Kovic, Born on the Fourth of July stars Tom Cruise as Kovic. When we first meet Kovic, he’s growing up on Long Island in the 50s and 60s. He’s a clean-cut kid from a nice family. He’s on the school wrestling team and he’s got a lot of friends. When he was just 15, he heard John F. Kennedy telling people to ask what they can do for their country and he was inspired. He decided he wanted to join the Marines, despite the fact that his father (Raymond J. Barry) was still haunted by the combat that he saw in World War II. (In one of the film’s better scenes, a young Kovic notices that the elderly veterans marching in the Independence Day parade still flinch whenever they hear a firecracker.) He enlists in the Marines after listening to a patriotic speech from a recruiter (played by Tom Berenger). Ron runs through the rain to attend his prom and has one dance with Donna (Kyra Sedgwick), on whom he’s always had a crush. There’s nothing subtle about the way that Stone portrays Kovic’s childhood. In fact, one might argue that it’s a bit too idealized. But Stone knows what he’s doing. The wholesomenss of Kovic’s childhood leaves neither him nor the viewer prepared for what’s going to happen in Vietnam.

Vietnam turns out not to be the grand and patriotic adventure that Kovic thought it would be. After Sgt. Kovic accidentally shoots one of his own men in a firefight, he is ordered to keep quiet about the incident. After he is wounded and paralyzed in another firefight, Kovic ends up in a Hellish VA hospital, surrounded by men who will never fully recover from their mental and physical wounds. Kovic is eventually returns home in wheelchair. The film then follows Kovic as he goes from defending the war in Vietnam to eventually turning against both the war and the government. At one point, he ends up with a group of disabled vets in Mexico and there’s a memorable scene where he and another paraplegic (Willem Dafoe) attempt to fight despite having fallen out of their chairs. Eventually, Kovic returns to America and turns his anger into activism.

There’s nothing subtle about Born On The Fourth Of July. It’s a loud and angry film and Oliver Stone directs with a heavy-hand. Like a lot of Stone’s films, it overwhelms the viewer on a first viewing and it’s only during subsequent viewings that one becomes aware of just how manipulative the film is. Tom Cruise gives a good performance as Ron Kovic but his transformation into a long-haired, profane drunk still feels as if it happens a bit too abruptly. A good deal of the film centers on Kovic’s guilt about accidentally killing one of his men but the scene where he goes to the soldier’s family and asks them for forgiveness didn’t quite work for me. If anything, Kovic came across as being rather self-centered as he robs the man’s mother and father of the belief that their son had at least died heroically in combat as opposed to having been shot by his own sergeant. Did Kovic’s need to absolve himself really give him the right to cause this family more pain? Born on the Fourth Of July is an effective work of agitprop. On the first viewing, you’ll want to join Kovic in denouncing the military and demanding peace. On the second viewing, you’ll still sympathize with Kovic while also realizing that he really owes both his mother and father an apology for taking out his anger on them. By the third viewing, you’ll be kind of like, “Wow, I feel bad for this guy but he’s still kind of a jerk.” That said, when it comes to making an effective political film, Adam McKay could definitely take some lessons from Oliver Stone. Born On The Fourth of July is at its best when it simply captures the feeling of living in turmoil and discovering that the world is not as simple a place as you once believed. As idealized as the film’s presentation of Kovic’s childhood may be, anyone who has ever felt nostalgia for an earlier and simpler world will be able to relate.

Oliver Stone won his second Best Director Oscar for Born On The Fourth Of July. The film itself lost Best Picture to far more genteel version of the past, Driving Miss Daisy.