Retrospective Film Review

Born on the Fourth of July (1989) • 35 Years Later — Vietnam War true story with a powerhouse Tom Cruise performance

The biography of Ron Kovic, a US Marine paralysed in the Vietnam war who became an anti-war and pro-human rights political activist.

Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July, the second film in his ‘Vietnam trilogy’ (following 1986’s Platoon and preceding 1993’s Heaven and Earth), focuses on what it was like for the soldiers coming home after the conflict — when the United States was in turmoil during the Civil Rights movement and anti-war protests. Stone, who himself completed two tours in Southeast Asia, was hired to write the screenplay back in the late 1970s. At the last moment, though, financing fell through and the project was left in limbo for the next decade.

Based on the autobiography of the same name by Ron Kovic, the story details his life growing up in Massapequa, Long Island, who, when he was 19 years old, volunteered to be enlisted into the Marine Corps, just as the war was gaining…