Netflix movie of the day: Born on the Fourth of July is a harrowing movie with an extraordinary Tom Cruise performance

The movie where Tom Cruise showed he was more than just a pretty face

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For many actors, the pivot to Oscar-bait “serious movies” after making lots of money from more lightweight fare is a well-worn cliché. But asRoger Ebertwrote in 1989, “nothing [Tom] Cruise has done will prepare you for what he does inBorn on the Fourth of July… his performance is so good that the movie lives through it”.

InBorn on the Fourth July, which is now streaming onNetflix, Cruise plays Ron Kovic, who fought in Vietnam and came home paralyzed from the waist down. The film is based on his memoir, and it’s directed by another veteran, Oliver Stone. What emerges is a powerful, visceral and haunting story about what happens when young men go to war – and what happens to them when they come home.

War is hell

As Ebert explains, both Kovic and Stone were “gung-ho patriots who were eager to answer their country’s call to arms”. And despite everything they experienced, they returned from Vietnam as patriots – patriots who were offended and angered by the hostility they experienced from the anti-war movement. But Kovic’s experiences back home were horrendous – and some of them are shown here in excruciating detail – and he began spiralling into self-destruction. The film follows him all the way to rock bottom, and sticks with him as he attempts to climb back up.

It’s an extraordinary, heartbreaking film that’s much smarter and more thoughtful than most war movies. Stone came to this movie after makingPlatoon, andBorn on the Fourth of Julyis a kind of smarter, more nuanced sequel in its portrayal not just of the horrors of war, but the horrors of post-war life.

Pauline Kael ofThe New Yorkerhated it, but she was in the minority of critics alongside theWashington Post, which said that while it was “an impassioned movie, made with conviction and evangelical verve. It’s also hysterical and overbearing and alienating”.

Varietydescribed Cruise’s performance as “stunning”, andRolling Stonesaid that “Stone has found in Cruise the ideal actor to anchor the movie with simplicity and strength”.Time Outcalled it a “compelling, elegiac film, particularly encouraging after the simplified morality ofPlatoon”. And forThe New York Times, it was “the most ambitious non-documentary film yet made about the entire Vietnam experience”.

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Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir,Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now and her next book, about pop music, is out in 2025. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock bandUnquiet Mind.

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