Cruise plays Ron Kovic, a young American raised on a steady diet of rah-rah patriotism and John Wayne movies, who wants desperately to fight in a war. He gets the chance but soon learns that it’s the wrong war — that really, almost any war is wrong. He comes back from Vietnam damaged, confined to a wheelchair, unclear anymore as to what makes a man. Cruise is ferocious as Kovic — witness a heartbreaking scene in which he angrily rips out his own catheter tube — and he nabbed the first of his three Oscar nominations for the role.
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