Birdy (1984)

I love this movie so much

Memorable, crazy movie

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The first must-see film of the year.

This is a wonderful character study of two friends throughout life.Al (Nicolas Cage) and Birdy (Matthew Modine) put in some great performances, to be expected by this point from Cage. Birdy wants to transcend his human experience and learn to fly. Cage humors his aspirations and wants to help his friend.Later on, the friends go through something neither can fully comprehend. (Vietnam War) The ramifications of the war weigh heavy on their heads.It's a tale about friendship, and what it means to be there for someone. Highly recommend.

Birdy is one of my favorite films from the 80's, one that slipped mostly unnoticed as far as award recognition goes. Though it has a lot of the 80's feel in it (especially in Peter Gabriel's wonderful soundtrack), it aged far less than many films of its time, and while it plays around with various clichés, it refuses to go all the way with any of them, and so manages to be fresh and surprising even now.A lot of that originality may be missed when referring to Birdy as a war film, or a story about PTSD. The film follows two friends and Vietnam vets before and after the wars, through intersecting flashbacks - a familiar tool in war films. But this time the flashbacks are as important as the scenes taking place in the present; the war experience, surprisingly, is only one example - maybe the ultimate one - of society bringing down people that live on its fringes, which is what Birdy is all about. It's a buddy film, a psychological drama, a social critique, a film about friendship and madness and non-conformism, and maybe a coming-of-age story (or a not-coming of age story), but war plays a much smaller part than might seem at first, and wisely, 'Nam flashbacks (which we've seen so many of in so many films) are few and saved till the very end.Special attention should go to the two lead actors - Nicholas Cage and Matthew Modine, both in the very early stages of their careers and both supplying one of the definitive performances of their careers (in Modine's case probably the peak of his career). They create real, full, flawed characters, aided by Alan Parker's sensitive directorial work and by poetic, beautiful cinematography. The film deals with some difficult and very dark questions, but it manages to keep the audience interested and even entertained without compromising its message. The 80's feel does pop-up every now and then, and some of the flashbacks to the 50's and early 60's rely too heavily on well-tried clichés of period films (most jarringly, the use of La Bamba and other hits of the time period in certain scenes, clashing with the beautiful score). But all those little flaws don't make Birdy anything less than a classic.

A man suffering from post-war trauma is helped by a friend who was also injured in Vietnam. We learn about their friendship through flashbacks. Modine brings a gentle sensibility to the title role of a bird lover so traumatized that he no longer speaks or acknowledges anyone. In what was at the time his biggest role, Cage is dynamic as Birdy's friend, displaying a volatile combination of empathy and anger. There are some very funny moments, such as Birdy's awkward prom date. The film's pacing suffers somewhat due to the episodic nature of the narrative, but Parker infuses the film with visual elegance and skillfully balances the drama and the comedy. The ending is great.

Imagine a movie where one of the main characters is highly annoying and inscrutable, and the other main character is average, boring and yet also inscrutable. Now imagine they're best friends even though the annoying one doesn't really seem to give a damn and the average one has no understandable reason for his apparent deep love for the annoying one. Throw in some facial bandages on Nic Cage (I guess they want to take his face off) and random scenes of animal abuse, you and you have Birdy. This movie is mostly charmless and pointless. Even the score, which was composed by Peter Gabriel, sounds like some rinker dink low talent crap. This score suits the movie, it's lame and unmemorable. I guess the music did sometimes bring a heightened tension to things; even though nothing would actually happened in a scene, the thudding drum beats still quickened my heart rate a little.I don't have many good things to say about Birdy. It was slightly interesting at points. Nic Cage did a fairly good job of delivering a relatively normal character, but the story gave the character so little motive or meaning. The ending could have been worse /Spoilers/ I actually liked that Birdy didn't "fly" to his death, even though that would have been a rather fitting way to end the character, it would have been depressing and just made the movie seem like an even bigger waste of time. /End Spoilers/Mainly this movie annoyed and bored me. I was unable to relate to much of anything. Certain animal scenes disturbed and troubled me. I don't feel there is much point to this movie. So unless you just like watching an obsessed birder get freaky or you just really want to see Nicolas Cage play what may be his most restrained role, I recommend you skip Birdy.