 Starring: Tom Cruise, Frank Whaley, Kyra Sedgwick, Willem Dafoe
Director: Oliver Stone
Year Of Release: 1989
Plot: Ron Kovic is an idealistic young man who buys into the US government’s idea that they must fight communism in Vietnam in order to prevent the Reds ending up on America’s doorstep (the domino theory). However when he’s wounded and paralysed in combat (a while after having apparently killed a fellow marine in a friendly fire incident), he comes back to the US to find neither the government of public cares about those who fought in Asia. As he gets angrier and angrier about his situation, he finally finds a purpose in life in the anti-war movement. |
In the late 80s and early 90s it really seemed like Tom Cruise wanted an Oscar. Having made his name with popcorn flicks like Risky Business, Top Gun and Cocktail, he suddenly switched gears and wanted to be taken seriously. More than that, he really seemed to want to get an Academy Award.
In 1986 he made The Color of Money with Scorsese, followed it with Rain Man in 1988, then Born on the Fourth of July in 1989, with Far & Away coming in 1992. It really did seem like Tom was trying to cover all the bases of the type of film that wins people Oscars, from historical epics to playing someone with a handicap to serious dramas.
The problem was it didn’t quite work. Well, not for him anyway. The Color of Money won Paul Newman his only Oscar, but Tom didn’t even get nominated. The same happened with Rain Man, which scored Dustin Hoffman a little gold man (the film also picked up Best Director, Best Picture and Best Screenplay), but there wasn’t even a sniff of an award for Tom.
You could understand if he was getting a bit annoyed at this point, as his plans to win an Academy Award just seemed to be helping other get there ahead of him. However with his star status still at the front of his mind, it’s perhaps not surprising he didn’t get nominated, as in those Color Of Money and Rain Man, he took relatively safe, handsome leading man roles, leaving the full-on acting to others.
Then came Born on the Fourth of July, which was his most blatant Oscar attempt yet. Playing a character who starts off seeming like the typical Tom Cruise handsome hero, but who then gets paralysed, turns into a hippe and can’t stop talking about his catheter and the fact his penis doesn’t work, was Oscar bait fodder of the most deliberate kind. Cruise may say he went for the film because of the story, but it didn’t take a brain scientist to realise that wasn’t the only thing that attracted him to the movie, and that thoughts of golden men must have figured in his decision making process.
Born on the Fourth of July also has one of my favourite scenes ever, which I hope is meant to be humorously absurd, because otherwise I have a really sick sense of humour. However, when Cruise and Willem Dafoe start having an argument about who’s killed the most babies and doubt the other person’s baby killing prowess, I can’t help but giggle. Perhaps Vietnam vets did have ‘I killed more babies than you did’ battles, but in Born on the Fourth of July it’s just very funny (although thematically it works very well).
Cruise did better with the Oliver Stone movie, as he scored his very first Best Actor nomination, and many thought that playing someone in a wheelchair made him a shoe-in for the gong. However he didn’t bet on someone else doing a better job at pretending to be handicapped than he did, and so Daniel Day-Lewis walked off with the Oscar for My Left Foot. However Born On The Fourth Of July did pick up Best Director and Best Editing.
While Far & Away, the historical epic about Irish people going to America, seemed like an insanely calculated attempt to score some Oscars by all involved, the less said about that movie the better. The film flopped and didn’t even get a single Academy Award nomination.
While Tom’s Oscar search was put slightly on the backburner after this (he seemed to have got the hint), he never quite forgot it. Oddly though, his next Oscar nomination actually came from a film where he was more likely to have been thinking commercially than critically. Jerry Maguire was designed as a popular rom-com, and while the public loved it, so did a lot of people in Hollywood and Tom got a Best Actor nod. However he was once again stymied by people pretending to be handicapped, as Geoffrey Rush took the award for Shine.
1999 brought two films that seemed designed to up Cruise cachet as a serious actor – Eyes Wide Shut and Magnolia. However while Tom’s collaboration with Stanley Kubrick didn’t turn out too well, despite a massively long production schedule, Magnolia did much better and Cruise scored a Best Supporting Actor nomination. This time many people thought he might actually win, as he put in a good performance that seemed honest to the film, rather than saying ‘look at me, give me an Oscar’ (it’s not unlikely that the reason he’s had so much difficulty winning an Oscar isn’t just because he’s a good but not great actor, but because if you look like you’re deliberate trying to get an Academy Wards, puts the voters off). However while Cruise got the Golden Globe for Magnolia, Michael Caine took the Oscar for Cider House Rules.
Since then, The Last Samurai, Lions For Lambs and Valkyrie have all seemed like Cruise wanting a few awards, but he hasn’t had a sniff for any of them. Poor old Tom, he’s certainly done his best, but he’s got very little Academy love, so he’ll just have to satisfy himself with being one of the world’s top movie stars and his millions of dollars.
However it’s probably because of his top-of-the-a-list success that he’s been so keen on winning an Oscar. After all, when you get to that high in Hollywood, what else is there new to achieve?
But will he ever win one? Well, unless he gets run over by a bus tomorrow, he’ll probably get an honorary lifetime achievement award one day. That’s all Hitchcock ever got, despite being one of the greatest movie stars ever. Lauren Bacall also picked one up last month, and despite being a screen legend, she’s only ever had one Oscar nomination, for The Mirror Has Two Faces in 1997.
If Tom ever does win a competitive Oscar, it’s most likely to come when he’s old. As mentioned above, Paul Newman didn’t win an Oscar until 1986. In fact a lot of top movie stars have had very little academy attention until they reached their dotage. For example John Wayne had to wait until he was 64 to win for True Grit (and despite making over 150 films, he only got three Oscar nominations through his entire career). Clint Eastwood may have won two Best Director awards, for Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby, but he didn’t get his first acting nomination until he was 62 and he’s never won anything for his on-screen efforts. Ironically both his acting nominations came for the films where he won the Best Director Gong. As noted with Lauren Bacall, she’s only has one competitive nomination, and even that didn’t come until he was 73, while her honorary award came when she was 85.
Like Eastwood, Cruise’s best hope for an Oscar may actually be behind-the-camera. As head of United Artists, the first time he gets to stands on the Academy Awards podium may well be as a producer. However, he’s going to have to get involved with better movies than United Artists has produced so far under his leadership, if that’s ever going to happen.
However my advice to him would be not to try so hard, and then wait. Both Eastwood and Wayne had to wait until their star status had dimmed before they started finding Oscar success. Before then, part of the problem was that their performances were only judged by how they fitted with their star persona. It was only when they got old enough that people started looking at them as actors/filmmakers again rather than just movie stars that the Academy started showing them some respect. Tom will probably get an Oscar one day, but not quite yet.
TIM ISAAC
PREVIOUS: Born To Be Bad (1934) - Or, the last days of classic Hollywood's loose women, and why this film should've been completely forgotten
NEXT: Born Yesterday - Or, in praise of forgotten actresses (and the tragic story of Judy Holliday)
CLICK HERE to see the index of 909 films and TV shows the Movie-A-Day Project will be covering
CLICK HERE to find out more about the idea behind The Movie-A-Day Project
CLICK HERE to follow Movie_A_Day on Twitter
