 "I did not want to like this movie" | 2010-03-13 |
| - Reviewed By DVD viewer from St Louis |
| I was in the USAF during those late 60's and we had it much easier in many ways. Marines and Grunts were expendable and like Tom Cruise (the tragic hero Ron Kovic) I first HATED the protestors and when I got back to the Nation I first HATED the lack of respect for the debt our country and military men paid even more. Like our hero Kovic after many years I started to see the stupidity of the "War we did not try to win (not bombing Hanoi and the dams to flood the country) and the lack of justification to pay the price or to be there". This movie made me ashamed I did not stay gun ho or re-enlist and to go back to fight for the friends I lost but thanked God I go out in one piece. One negitive point that hunts this film is Oliver Stone's failure to spend enough to really capture the heat, sweat, loneliness, helplessness and fruitlessness of the war and the real reasons for being in the Nam that only Fahrenheit 911 exposed. |
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| "Good Treatment of the 60's" | 2009-11-27 |
| - Reviewed By Two Thumbs from Ashburn, Virginia |
| Based on the true story of Ron Kovic (Tom Cruise), a gung-ho marine who questions his patriotism after some serious war wounds. Stone's surreal treatment of Kovic will make you empathize with the main character, but too many gaps in his Vietnam-era odyssey keeps the film from being a masterpiece. Still, a fine production in keeping with Stone's signature style. |
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 ""Tom Cruise Gives An Oscar Worthy Performance"" | 2009-07-10 |
| - Reviewed By Terry Richard from Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada |
Tom Cruise won an Oscar nomination as Best Actor for his performance of a Vietnam vet who leaves the United States as a young, vibrant man, but returns a wounded and emotionally damaged soul. "Born on The Fourth of July" is the most honest and frank account of what the Vietnam war did to American soldiers and how these soldiers must be applauded for their work. They must also never be forgotten.
It is hard to imagine Tom Cruise never winning for this role as this was really his first serious dramatic part in a film. It is even harder to believe he has never won an Oscar for any of his fabulous motion pictures.
Oliver Stone did win the Academy Award for Best Director for this movie in 1989. This DVD set features an informative and interesting commentary by Stone as well. |
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 "Did not get the hype" | 2009-05-19 |
| - Reviewed By Tammy Rena E. Davis from Lake Charles, La. |
| I needed to review the movie for a project, did not understand what all the hype was about.The movie was predictable. |
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| "Born on the 4th of July" | 2009-05-01 |
| - Reviewed By An Amazon User |
| Tom Cruise did a great job in this movie. It's a story about Viet Nam injured Vets and how they were treated & the poor condition of the VA hospitals and how one Vet fought the system. |
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| "THEY ALWAYS BLAME AMERICA FIRST" | 2009-02-07 |
| - Reviewed By AUTHOR from CALIFORNIA |
In 1989 Oliver Stone came out with "Born on the Fourth of July", the true story of Ron Kovic, a gung-ho Marine who is paralyzed in combat in Vietnam. The film is realistic and compelling. Stone is a master and Tom Cruise as Kovic gives one of his best-ever performances, proving him to be a bona fide acting talent. The film depicts the heartbreaking American experience in Vietnam, and the character arc of Kovic is as complete as any ever captured. He returns home, desperate to believe that his sacrifice was in a noble cause, but this is chipped away by the well-known elements of '60s radicalism. The "generation gap" between longhaired youths and crew cut, religious parents is profound. Kovic sinks into the depravity of drugs and alcohol, but battles back to become a "hero" of the anti-war Left. He wheels into the 1972 Republican National Convention, where he tries to tell the clean-cut, well-heeled patriots that they are wrong and he is right. The idea is that they are all warmongers who have not fought, while he is a pacifist because he has. While there is truth to the premise, in choosing to tell this story, Stone establishes Hollywood as the home of solidly liberal ideas. In 1972, Nixon won 49 states over the ant-war McGovern. The idea that all those Americans, subject daily to reports from Peter Arnett and Dan Rather, the bias of Walter Cronkite, and the hate of the New York Times and the Washington Post, chose Nixon because they were bloodthirsty imperialists is just malarkey. Furthermore, Nixon had made 18-year olds eligible to vote. The concept that all of American youth protested in the streets is a myth. The anti-war movement was propped by TV that made pockets of outrage look like a widespread movement. The Silent Majority spoke out in '72. Big time.
Stone's depiction is fair in and of itself, but he takes advantage of the power of his medium in creating a mindset that such horrors as Kovic experienced are just part of the "Vietnam experience." Kovic's life mirrors soldiers going back to the Roman Legion and beyond. The Left has taken Vietnam as one of those core issues and stuck to it, just as they found themselves wedded to Alger Hiss, Bill Clinton and now the losing side of the War on Terrorism. McCarthy was going after genuine Communists, and genuine Communists were trying to enslave South Vietnam. It took some fighting to stop them. Nixon and Kissinger had the best plan available to them at the time, and the public recognized it. Watergate killed them and the Democrats used it to abandon our allies. Millions died because of them. Democrats will have you believe that we "created" the "killing fields." They have to say things like that, to cling to this nebulous theory, somehow unable to blame the rabid haters and murderers of Communist history, apparently because they are wedded to McCarthyism. Their movies are their best tool in perpetuating their lies. Not on my watch. |
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