Taps

Old movie but worth watching agin

The item arrived on time and it is in good condition.No issues or problems, This is a classic movie from the 1980’s. Thank you, Martini

An overlooked, gripping drama that is notable for its young rising stars (Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn, Tom Cruise) and also its prescience, as noted by another commentator here, although I think that none of the Amazon reviewers to date has hit the nail on the head with "Taps" and its overarching theme. The movie begins fairly conventionally, with the teenage military cadets and their venerable institution shown to the viewer to be upright, virtuous, and full of sound moral values. The youths may be a bit immature at times, and callow, but their earnestness and sincerity are shown as admirable and their devotion to their gruff, benevolent commandant (George C. Scott, perfectly cast) is unquestioned. You can literally hear the Sousa marches playing in the background. But just when you think you're in for a predictable, one-sided, nattily uniformed prep school movie preaching the military virtues, the plot takes a darker twist and we learn that appearances can be very deceiving. Faced with the closing of the school, the boys turn renegade, immediately betraying their duty of obedience in the emotions of the moment. While determined, brave, and motivated by principle, they are at the same time defying legal authority and behaving unwisely. Recognition of this causes the relationships and trust among the cadets to splinter tragically. Through the words of Hutton's career soldier father -- a wonderful supporting performance, with the hard, practical professional tearing down the cadets' naivete -- we are presented a picture of Scott's commandant that does not fit the boys' hero-worshipful image. And then the national guardsman who arrives to end the armed takeover of the school acts as Hutton's conscience, pointing out to him how far from the path of honor he has truly strayed. Hutton's friends -- the pragmatic Penn, who wants to end the conflict peacefully, and the belligerent Cruise, who lusts for a bloody showdown -- tug him in two directions and he manages to antagonize both of them, furthering his sense of isolation and failure. Finally, the accidental but predictable death of an extremely young cadet -- no more than a boy -- is lain at Hutton's feet, and is more than he can bear. There is no glory or purpose in this death -- "You just think about what a great little kid he was, and how much you're gonna miss him," Hutton is forced to acknowledge, in the movie's big statement: that high-flown rhetoric about dying for honor and country isn't enough. "There must have been something more that we weren't taught," he tearfully reflects. Subtly,"Taps" has moved away from preaching the sanitary hagiography of "Dulce et decorum est / pro Patria mori" to address a greater truth -- that without wisdom, military virtues and sacrifices are just so much posturing and lead only to waste and misery. It was a brave statement to make back when this film was made and an even more important concern in 2005. The final shots -- a grieving Penn and the surviving cadets slowly fading into the mist, then an abrupt cut to a reprise of the triumphant military review sequence from earlier in the movie (is this supposed to be a vision of Hutton's entrance into Valhalla?) -- starkly hammer this point home. A fine, thoughtful movie that is sympathetic to all its characters but also does not shy away from condemning their blindness. As an ROTC alumni myself (at one stage of my life I would have loved to attend a school like this, and part of me still would), I salute it.

Full disclosure: I was in my first year of three years at a fairly prestigious military academy when this came out. Leaving the theater in uniform was... um... awkward. There was a period of time there where it felt like the civilian town population was afraid we were going to engage in armed insurrection. Not happening. 1) all military prep academies (and I mean all of them) are JROTC, as in Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. They don't drill with operable, militarized weapons. Ever. They also don't have access to automatic weapons like M-14s, M-16s, or miniguns. And they certainly don't have live grenades! That was just absurd. 2) we had an entire armory filled with hundreds of M-1s and M-14s that were demilitarized weapons, as in the firing pins were removed and the cylinders drilled out, so they couldn't be replaced. We used them for close order drill and to field strip and reassemble. 40 years later I could probably strip down and reassemble an M-1 in under two minutes. 3) the only operable weapons we had on hand were a few dozen .22 rifles, and they were only for range qualifying. They were issued to the shooters at the range, and returned at the range. 4) the one thing the movie did get right was the townie attitude towards the cadets. There was a lot of misplaced anger and envy hurled our way, and after I graduated they stopped allowing cadets to walk into town because they were being targeted by carloads of drunk, angry townies. They now provide shuttles and private security at some places. To its credit, Taps hits hard at what was the anti-military public attitude of the time. It came out just six years after we left Vietnam, and in complete contrast to today, anyone who joined the military back then was considered either a loser or some insane person who just wanted to hurt people. Finally, our military school was pretty hard-edged and gung ho, but getting the cadet corps to take over the place just to keep it open? That would have been laughable. If during my senior year they told us that the school was shutting down and they were building condos in its place, we all would've thrown a huge drunken party in celebration, and then scrambled off to college. All the military cadet were the farthest thing from brainwashed automatons. If anything we were more critical of many of the military's shortcomings. Taps is a good movie, but take the circumstances of the story arc for what it is: hyperbole to drive a point home.

Good movie

Movie played great. Was in very good shape as described. No issues at all with packaging and came in sooner than what was reported.

A little movie that could. Ignore those poo pooing. This movie demonstrates that huge budget, CGI, graphic violence and formulaic sex scenes are not needed to tell a good story. Boys with an incomplete picture of what it means to be man, attempting to act on and protect honor that they don’t understand. They are deprived of a father figure and tragically loose their way. We see this in broken families every day.

Great movie

Una desgracia que no esté en bluray!!yo no la he encontrado....al menos ha un precio razonable y en castellano!!la quería para mi colección!!la calidad del dvd como no !!es muy regular!!video a pantalla completa pero mala y sonido 2.0!!aún así recomendable!!gran película!!

Top film

great

Une véritable leçon sur l'embrigadement et ses mécanismes ou comment pervetir de jeunes esprit croyant agir pour le bien. De plus, les personnages principaux sont remarquablement interprétés par une kyrielle de jeunes acteurs qui allaient marquer les années 80. Un remarquable film à thème qui se regarde autant comme un film d'action que comme une oeuvre militante. Attention, chef d'oeuvre méconnu !

Très bon film,bonne qualité dvd.