Ehirerapp Waste of time

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Dan Guercio Taps is one of my favorite movies and it is without a doubt one of Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn's best performances. The entire premise of the movie is entertaining, heartfelt, and thought provoking all at the same time. The message of the film, which is while there is honor and valor in war there is also young and meaningless death, is one of the best messages a movie can convey and is also conveyed so perfectly that it is easily noticeable and understandable. Taps is an eye opener that expresses how war can be misconstrued as a playground for heroes and not an unnecessary loss of life. Overall, Taps is a great movie that deserves much better than it received.

robert-temple-1 This was Sean Penn's first feature film and Tom Cruise's second feature film, so it is memorable for introducing such well known stars to the screen when they were young men. But the film is totally dominated by a magnificent bravura performance by Timothy Hutton, of astonishing power and conviction. The film is set in a boys' military academy called Bunker Hill Academy, in America. For people not familiar with such institutions, or indeed for all people unfamiliar with America, it is common for boys' boarding schools to be 'military academies', the very idea of such a thing being of course unknown in Britain. And by military they mean military, that is, the boys really wear uniforms all the time, drill like soldiers, and are subjected to military discipline. Many fathers think this 'makes a man of' their sons. What it can do, however, is scar them for life. (This happened in the late 19th century in Bohemia to the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, for instance.) Some boys thrive on this kind of thing, go into the Army eventually as a career, and are happy as clams. To each his own! Here we see a military academy to beat all military academies, one which is so military it surpasses the real Army itself. At the beginning of the film it is run by a headmaster who is a spell-binding patriarch who dazzles the cadets with his oratory, a retired general played by George C. Scott. Hutton plays a cadet who hero-worships him. It is the end of the school year, and Hutton has just been appointed Cadet Major (equivalent to Head Prefect) for the following year. That means he will be the commanding officer of the students, answerable only to the General. He has been told so often about the importance of loyalty and honour that when an unexpected event occurs, he duly does what he has been trained to do, he … well, that's just the problem … At Commencement Day, in the presence of all the parents, following the parade and file-past with elaborate salutes to the General (the boy officers even hold swords to their noses as they do 'eyes right', it is all far more elaborate than any drill I ever did, and I was a cadet officer in a non-military school when young and did that kind of thing, but not with real rifles and a sword up my nostrils like we see here), the General announces that the trustees of the Academy have decided to close the school and sell off the land to commercial developers. This shocks all the boys, who begin to think they should defend their 'country', i.e. their academy, like real soldiers. There is a conflict between 'town and gown' and the townies attack some of the cadets (although the word is not used in this film, such cadets are commonly known as 'bellhops' by boys in non-military boarding schools). In the melée, the General's pistol goes off accidentally and kills a boy from the town. He is then taken away by the police, leaving the closing school rudderless, as many of the teachers and more than half of the students leave for the summer. Some, however stay for 'the summer session', among them being Timothy Hutton who is now de facto in charge of the Academy, and Sean Penn and Tom Cruise leading figures amongst the other cadets. Some of the boys are only 11 or 12 years old, but most are between 16 and 18. They decide they are not going to let the developers get away with it, and so they follow all their military training and set up a defence of the school. Because the General had been more than a little gun-happy, he had stocked the school with huge quantities of guns and real ammunition. These are duly distributed amongst the cadets and they set up defensive positions, sandbags, barriers, and sentries patrolling the walls which surround the school. This erupts into violence and gunfire and becomes 'the real thing'. The cadets keep saying that honour dictates that they must defend their principles. They do a raid on the town in a truck which they stock with food, and they hunker down to await the life and death shootout. They are all prepared to die for their school. Of course, one can sympathise with their hatred of the commercial developers who want to destroy their school and all that they believe in just for the sake of money. Hating them is one thing, but shooting them is another. With no one in charge but the idealistic Hutton, the borderline between fantasy and reality collapses. The real Army comes and lays siege to the school, bringing in tanks. When a 12 year-old cadet is shot and killed by one of the real soldiers, half the cadets desert because they are terrified, but the rest remain, prepared to die for their beliefs. This film is a study of honour, but it shows that even honour, when carried to extremes which have lost touch with reality, can become dishonour without the people who believe in it even realizing it. The film is thus an extraordinarily thoughtful study of a noble principle carried to such extremes that young kids end up dying for their beliefs, because the grown-ups will not listen to them. The ending cannot be revealed, but to say that things become hyper-tense is an understatement. This is a knockout of a film, and it would make anyone, even the dullest person, think. And as we all know, thinking is the thing that most people try to avoid doing if at all possible. So if a film can make people think, then it does deserve all the support and admiration we can give it. This film is a masterpiece of serious examination of matters of conscience, and is extremely exciting and well made.

Robert J. Maxwell We are at Bunker Hill Military Academy, a prep school with students ranging in age from, say, high-school seniors to boys so small that they can't possibly have experienced any of the delights of puberty. The cadet corps is run by proud Timothy Hutton. His immediate subordinates include the sensible Sean Penn -- yes, sensible -- and the semi-psychotic Tom Cruise. In overall command is the avuncular General George C. Scott.The problem is that, as Scott announces to the cadets, the school will be closed and sold for its real estate value next Fall. They are going to mow the place down and build condominiums. Scott dies promptly of a heart attack and, led by Cadet Major Hutton, most of the kids confiscate the stores of weapons and lay down a list of demands before they will allow the school to be dissolved. I was all on the side of the cadets. Not that I love military academies but that I hate condominiums. It's rather like why I'm a vegetarian. I hate the taste and texture of vegetables but I love to kill them by eating them raw or boiling them.This film sounds like it has a lot of social relevance -- the military and patriots and men of honor on one side, and the peace-mongering wussies who never had a fist fight on the other. Now we're all going to refight the Vietnam War.But it's not like that at all. Timothy Hutton is a bright kid with leadership qualities only, as it's explained somewhat clumsily, he has reason to hate his father, who is a Sergeant Major, and has found a substitute in General George C. Scott. And therein lies the problem. Hutton has absorbed only part of Scott's message about self discipline, and death before dishonor, and all that elementary stuff. After all, he's only seventeen. It's only with a little seasoning that we can begin to look behind the buzz words.Hutton is supported by Penn because Penn has "never walked out on a friend," and it's Penn who finally talks Hutton into ordering the adoption of another common tactic -- "declare victory and depart the field." But Tom Cruise is the genuine nut job aboard for this adventure into terra incognito. Throughout, he's always been something of a martinet. He is the leader of a group of red berets. I don't know exactly what they're function is but it appears to be something like the Gestapo's. And while the rest of the cadet corps is marching sullenly and weaponless towards the gate where the National Guard is waiting, Cruise cuts loose from an upper window with an M-60 screaming, "It's beautiful! It's BEAUTIFUL!" The performances are all pretty good without any being exceptional. The chief weakness is in the script. It's opened up a whole can of worms and doesn't want to get its fingers dirty by digging into it. The problem with pride, honor, and a feeling of knowing more than others, is that that whole assemblage of attitudes can't exist without an enemy. If you're superior, then you must by definition be superior to someone else. In this case, there are only off-hand references to the pencil-pushers and bean counters. Not that the film presents external forces -- the local cops and the National Guard -- as anything other than reasonable or even perfect. But solidarity is self reinforcing. It feels so good to be part of a group that's even only temporarily powerful that often the original goal is lost sight of. That's what happened during the prison riots at Attica. The governor granted some of the inmates demands and the inmates ripped up the concession to great cheers from the throng. Finally the governor granted ALL their wishes -- and an inmate in the center of the yard ripped them up to great cheers from the throng. The point was no longer to have their wishes granted but to relish the momentary sense of power.And the distinction between civilian power over the military is hardly mentioned. It's one of the lessons that Scott apparently never passed on, but it's a fundamental one. It's why our Commander-in-Chief is called a "president" and not a "generalissimo." Here's something the governor and the National Guard might have tried. They might have simply waited the kids out. What the heck. They couldn't have had that much food. The electricity and water could have been shut down. Enthusiasm for the cause was hardly universal -- about half of them quit. Morale would have crumbled eventually. Fads fade quickly among teens.And Tom Cruise's final insane outburst was completely unjustified by what we'd learned of his character earlier, but then it had to happen or we'd all have been denied the pleasure of the final shoot out. We're built for speed and action, not waiting patiently, not thinking things through logically. In a sense, Tom Cruise stands in for part of all of us. And so do the proud Timothy Hutton and the sensible Sean Penn. I hope when we face our next crisis, whether national or personal, we can find some middle ground.

bkoganbing Taps is about the cadets of Bunker Hill Military Academy and their commanding officer, George C. Scott, and their reaction to the news of the closing of the Academy.Scott announces at the graduation that the next year will be the final year of Bunker Hill. The Board of Trustees is selling off the place for its prime real estate value to be used for condominium development. Certainly an occurrence we've seen all over the country in many places and not something really desirable in many.Cadet Major Timothy Hutton knows he will head the last graduating class at Bunker Hill. He and fellow cadets like Sean Penn and Tom Cruise aren't taking it lying down. They may be military cadets, but they've seen and grown up with student protests. Only these students have weapons and are trained in their use. Can you really blame the cadets like Hutton who've actually in fact forgotten that soldiers carry out and don't make policy? I think it was significant that during the course of Taps it's mentioned that George C. Scott served with General Douglas MacArthur who gave him a sword for his service. It's also mentioned that Scott was passed over for promotion an advancement beyond being a brigadier general and was retired comfortably out to pasture at the Academy.Scott's not the same kind of military man you see in Patton. Rather he's a lot like the Patton you see in that television film, Patton, the Last Days. A man so totally out of his element that when the accident and broken neck occurred he'd lost his will to live.Anyway after a scuffle with some of the town louts who are less than enamored of Bunker Hill's military tradition. A town kid is accidentally killed when he tries to get Scott's military issue pistol and it discharges. In a court of law, the man would have been acquitted, but Scott answers to a higher law he lives by. That scuffle threatens to close the school even for the last year and the kids seize it. It's a confrontation then between idealistic and wrongheaded youth and the real forces of law enforcement.Ronny Cox contributes a very nice performance as the commanding general of the National Guard trying to keep a lid on the situation. His scenes with the idealistic and obstinate Hutton are the highlight of the film for me.Tom Cruise and Sean Penn got their first real notice in this film right at the start of their respective mega-careers. Hutton has a nice followup to his Oscar winning performance from Ordinary People. And George C. Scott is, George C. Scott.