SBS movie of the week: 'Born on the Fourth of July'

Source: SBS Movies

Born on the Fourth of July is one of the world's greatest war movies. It screens on SBS World Movies Friday July 30 at 9:30pm.

As part of 'Iconic 80's Week' SBS World Movies will screen Oliver Stone's awe-inspiring Born On The Fourth of July, which charts the devastating evolution of an archetypal all-American boy into a haunted anti-Vietnam War activist.

The second film in Stone's acclaimed Vietnam trilogy, Born on the Fourth of July is an important postscript to his Oscar-winning Platoon. It tells the story of Ron Kovic, who was shot in the spine during his second tour of duty in 1968, and on his return home, was radicalised into one of the most outspoken critics of U.S. involvement in the conflict.

Tom Cruise plays wounded Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic in 'Born on the Fourth of July'. Source: SBS Movies

"In telling Ron's story, I hoped that I could get to the heart of veteran's issues, to what the veterans had come back to after the war," Stone said at the time of the film's release.

Stone also served in Vietnam and was wounded twice on the battlefield. He worked with Kovic to adapt the solder's memoir about his post-service political awakening.

"Oliver and I come from very different backgrounds," Kovic said at the time. "But we had a common bond: we'd both gone to Vietnam, survived the war, come home. There was an immediate rapport."

Watch a clip (language warning):

When Ron Kovic (Tom Cruise) goes to fight in Vietnam, his fellow Americans are waving flags; when he returns wounded, they are burning them. Cruise's transformation from clean cut patriot into an exhausted, embittered paraplegic, earned him his first Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe award.

Of casting Cruise, Stone said: "I thought he was the best person of his generation to play the role. He came from the same kind of working class Catholic upbringing as Ron, and he had that same drive to be the best, to be Number One. I saw that in Ron, I saw that in Tom."

Watch the original trailer: