By the end of 2025, Tom Cruise is going to be an Oscar winner (not for Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, if you were wondering). It’s been announced that the movie icon will receive an honorary Oscar at the 2025 Governors Awards, with his commitment to the filmmaking community, theatrical experience and stunt community cited as reasons for the honor. But Cruise could have, and probably should have, been an Oscar winner a long time ago. The case for why is easy to see as Born on the Fourth of July is now streaming on Netflix.
If you’re not familiar with the movie and think Born on the Fourth of July is a “rah-rah” patriotic movie, you may want to bump the brakes. The movie is a Vietnam war drama about real-life veteran Ron Kovic, who was paralyzed in Vietnam and became an anti-war and pro-human rights advocate. The movie was directed by Oliver Stone, with him co-writing the script with Kovic.
Cruise gives one of the best performances of his career as Kovic. While he displays his trademark movie star looks for the early part of the movie as the eager young soldier, when the story transitions to Kovic’s time after the war Cruise transforms, physically and emotionally in ways that we don’t see as much nowadays. It’s a committed and emotionally deep performance from the actor.
Rightfully so, he was awarded an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his work at the 1990 Academy Awards. The winner that year was Daniel Day-Lewis for My Left Foot, which is a hard performance to deny being worthy of a statue. Maybe it’s just the benefit of hindsight knowing that Day-Lewis would nab two more competitive Oscar trophies for There Will Be Blood and Lincoln while Cruise failed to win on any of his three acting Oscar nominations, but I have a hard time not thinking that Cruise may have been the better option.
Born on the Fourth of July did win two Oscars out of its eight nominations, for Best Editing and Best Directing for Stone. There’s also a strong argument to be made that the movie should have won Best Picture over the sweet but light Driving Miss Daisy (to me this is the superior movie to Stone’s actual Best Picture-winning Vietnam movie, Platoon).
Watch Born on the Fourth of July on Netflix for yourself to see if you agree with my take. The movie is streaming exclusively on the platform in the US.
Watch the trailer for Born on the Fourth of July right here:
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