Born on the Fourth of July

Born on the Fourth of July (1989) tells Ron Kovic's life. A young man volunteers for Vietnam, comes home paralysed from the chest down, meets the conditions inside veterans' hospitals, and ends up in the antiwar movement. The film shows three different men, and all three are the same person. There is also a version that was never made. Producer Martin Bregman bought the rights in 1976 with Al Pacino attached. Oliver Stone was hired to write it in 1977. Bregman and Pacino disliked the script, Paramount dropped it, and the project drifted between studios for years until Stone and Kovic gave up on it. Stone only managed to revive it after Platoon succeeded. Kovic co wrote the screenplay with Stone and came to set every day, rehearsing with Cruise. He appears briefly in the film as a Second World War veteran at a parade who flinches at exploding firecrackers. On 3 July 1989 he gave Cruise his own Bronze Star as a birthday present. Cruise prepared for a year, visiting veterans' hospitals and learning to use a wheelchair. Stone proposed having him injected with a paralysing drug for two days; the insurance company refused. The film won Oscars for Best Director and Best Film Editing from eight nominations. It runs 145 minutes. Good for: postwar America, political biography, and the hardest work Cruise ever did. Less good for: the hospital scenes are gruelling and the film presses hard emotionally. Several departures from Kovic's book drew argument; Stone is chasing effect rather than fidelity, and it shows.