(Work those Cammies, Timmy baby - oh, wait... he looks 15. Never mind.)
CAST: Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn, Tom Cruise, George C. Scott, Ronny Cox, Evan Handler.
DIRECTOR: Harold Becker
WARNING: Some SPOILERS and extraordinarily hubris-afflicted youth (AKA dumbasses) straight ahead…
There are some films that, while technically well-made and well-acted, are flaming train wrecks. How could a technically well-made and well-acted film turn into a flaming train wreck? Easy. When nothing anyone does onscreen makes any goddamned sense. When time and again, our characters make such colossally misguided decisions you can’t help but wonder if they were dropped repeatedly on their heads as babies - whether accidentally or otherwise. When your own heads starts to hurt because of the sheer number of times you slap it while screaming, “Oh. My. GOD!! You fucking IDIOTS!!”
These films come from all sorts of genre, but also belong to a special category I refer to as the, ahem, “Cluster Fuck Movie.” Some stellar examples include THE TOWERING INFERNO (Let’s cut costs during construction of this highrise! Let’s not check the sprinklers! Let’s throw a party on the roof filled with terrifying hairstyles and even more frightening evening wear! Let’s try not to act too surprised when the fucking building catches fire!), JURASSIC PARK (Let’s clone dinosaurs and fill a whole fucking island with them! Let’s invite a bunch of dumb shits to tour the place without any kind of protection! Let’s prepare ourselves for the massive lawsuits the survivors are going to slap the place with!), and any slasher/horror film you care to mention (Let’s sneak off into a dark place to have sex! Let’s investigate that strange noise coming from the dark room! Let’s run further down a hallway and get lost in the house instead of diving out the nearest window!
Suffice it to say, there are many examples of the “Cluster Fuck” movie. But you’d have to dig pretty deep to find a bigger one than the 1981 military drama, TAPS. This film is about what happens it’s announced that a prestigious military school, Bunker Hill Academy, is about to be shut down in a year to, I guess, make way for some condos.
The student body doesn’t take kindly to this and - I swear on every saint’s head I am not dreaming this shit up - seize armed control of the school to get the Board of Trustees to reconsider their decision to sell the place to the developers. Yes, our pimply-faced bastards actually think this is a feasible strategy. Feel free to slap your head at this point and scream, “Oh. My. GOD!!! You fucking IDIOTS!!!”
Somehow, I don’t think this tactic is going to dissuade the heartless developers so much as reinforce their decision to shut the school down, lest it produce more lemming-like militants who make a strong argument for letting your kids grow their hair out and smoke pot for the rest of their lives.
Let’s meet a few of the dipshits, er, dimbulbs, er, cadets: (1) First, there is Cadet Major Brian Moreland (Timothy Hutton), a by-the-book type who leads the armed stand-off; (2) Cadet Captain Alex Dwyer (Sean Penn), mellow and easy-going dude who seems to be the only one in the school with more than six brain cells to rub together; and (3) Cadet Captain David Shawn (Tom Cruise), psycho nutjob who loves his M-16 just a little too much - and pretty much thinks that stand-off is better than losing his virginity.
With the school locked down tight by the armed students, Brian makes his request to meet with the trustees to discuss the future of the place. He hopes to show them that the school is worth keeping open - even as every armed student stands scarily nearby like baby-faced commandos. Way to give the trustees the warm fuzzies, Bri. Folks, feel free to either laugh your asses off at this point - or just slap your head and scream again: “Oh, my GOD!!! You fucking IDIOTS!!!”
So, as you can imagine, the situation at the Bunker Hill Academy (with a name like that, are you at all surprised they’d rather raze the place and put up condos?) gets progressively worse and worse. Will the army’s negotiator, Col Kerby (Ronny Cox), talks some much-needed sense into these knuckleheads? Or will Brian continue to think that his strong-arm shenanigans are actually going to work? Will everything come to a head? And if so, are all these boys going to realize they would’ve been better off packing their bags and leaving? Can this runaway train be saved? And the most important question of all: is it just me - or does Tom Cruise look eerily like a butch Camilla Belle in this movie?
That might even be more frightening than the prospect of a shootout between the students and the army.
BUT, SERIOUSLY: As I wrote above, TAPS is an example of a film that is very well-made and well-acted. Unfortunately, it is also so implausible it ends up becoming a frustrating experience. You just don’t buy the scenario that director Harold Becker and his writers want to sell us. Not sure how things were portrayed in the novel by Devery Freeman, but presumably the escalation of events leading up to the student taking arms and seizing control of the school were more believable.
While the cast is uniformly terrific - especially Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn, and Tom Cruise in early performances that semaphore their future stardom - in the end their actions are just so irrational and defy conventional logic, that it undermines our concern for the cadets. I can understand some of the students being crazy enough to consider the idea of a standoff - especially David Shawn, who is either egotistical or insane or both - but not all of them. In the end, you’re just left shaking your head at the utter absurdity of the film’s premise.
In the end, while it’s a solid film that certainly cannot be considered average because of its polished, handsome execution and outlandish premise, it’s also that very same premise that keeps TAPS from rising any higher. While the students are certainly imperiled, we don’t feel any real concern for them because of the sheer irrationality of their actions. They’re just asking for it. When someone behaves foolishly and gets in a bind, they don’t exactly court our sympathies, do they?
Perhaps the novel explored the takeover more satisfactorily. After all, you have more leeway in a novel to set-up a story. In a film, you are severely limited to what can be shown visually and (to a lesser extent) verbalized. You can’t climb into a character’s head.
And that’s the problem with the film version of TAPS - we just don’t understand why these kids do what they do. Loving the school is just not enough of a motivation. There has to be a more compelling reason than that to lay their lives on the line. And I just don't see it.
