Taps: Hutton, Cruise, Penn and George C. Scott go to war...sort of
When I was a junior in high school, 20th Century Fox released director Harold Becker's Taps, a well-acted if rather unrealistic film about a group of teenaged military school cadets who, with visions of honor and duty in their minds, challenge local law enforcement agencies and even the Army National Guard to keep their military academy from being closed. Starring a Patton- esque George C. Scott as Gen. Harland Bache, the superintendent of Bunker Hill Academy, Taps also features a cast of young actors who were either already Academy Award-winners (Timothy Hutton) or destined for future Oscars and/or greater success in Hollywood (Sean Penn, Tom Cruise). Based on the novel Father Sky by Devery Freeman, the screenplay written by Robert Mark Kamen, James Lineberger and Darryl Ponicsan is best seen as an allegory about teenagers' extremist interpretations of such notions as honor, duty and courage rather than being a true to life mish-mash which blends a look at military sch