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, Tapsalso 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 school life and the Kent State incident of May 1970, which also featured a face-off between young American teens and the Army National Guard.

Taps starts out on a solemn note as Gen. Bache, a retired Army officer cut (unsurprisingly) from the same "blood-and-guts" leadership cloth as George S. Patton, Jr. leads that year's graduating class commencement ceremonies. Stirring marches fill the air as smartly-uniformed cadets march across the verdant parade field of Bunker Hill Military Academy (which was "played" by the real-life Valley Forge Military Academy), and old Gen. Bache watches this pomp and circumstance with steely eyes and heart-busting pride.

For junior-year cadet Brian Moreland (Timothy Hutton), this moment is pure gold; he has been selected to be the captain of next year's graduating class, and he is looking forward to both celebrating his new rank with the general - whom he idolizes - and assuming the rights and responsibilities of leadership.

However, not too long after Moreland is granted the privilege of dining with Gen. Bache and sharing the traditional sip of brandy, he and his fellow cadets receive stunning, heart-breaking news: the academy's board of trustees has, in a rather heartless "it's only business" fashion worthy of the Mob, decided to sell Bunker Hill Military Academy to a wealthy developer who wants the land to build a condominium complex.

In real life, Moreland and his crew, which includes fellow upperclassmen Alex Dwyer (Sean Penn) and David Shawn (Tom Cruise), would have complained bitterly and loudly, and perhaps getting their parents to hire top-notch attorneys to fight the board of trustees in court.

However, Taps isn't very interested in reality; it is essentially a post-Vietnam War drama (with no small amount of anti-military sentiment in its theme and tone) mixed in with plot devices similar to those in William Golding's The Lord of the Flies.
Thus when the beloved Gen. Bache is removed from the movie (I will leave this plot point for a new viewer to discover without spoilers), Moreland decides to "take up arms against a sea of troubles" and leads the Bunker Hill Academy cadet corps into an armed stand-off with local police officers and - eventually - an Army National Guard unit commanded by the no-nonsense Col. Kerby (Ronny Cox).

My Take: Though Harold Becker isn't a mediocre filmmaker - he is, after all, the director who made 1979's The Onion Field and 1980's The Black Marble (both based on books by Joseph Wambaugh) - Taps is a relatively average film which is blessed by a plethora of good performances by its cast but saddled by some unbelievable details and plot devices.

Naturally, when I first watched Taps back in the 1980s, such concerns did not bug me too much.  Watching the dramatic confrontation between the cadets and the "outsiders" intent in closing down their academy was - and still can be - a riveting experience, and the quality of the acting outshone the script's somewhat less realistic conceits.

Watching Taps nearly three decades later (and with the benefits of some grounding in film criticism and review-writing), however, is a sobering experience. 

For instance, in many instances I found myself wondering why the audience is never really shown more of the school's faculty and staff.  Having gone through both private public schools and community college in two countries, I know that a school of that size has to have had a large faculty and support staff, i.e. adults who could have supervised the cadets and avoided the tragic events which propel the film's plot.

Also, I keep on wondering how on Earth a non-U.S. Government run private military academy can let teens and tweens get their hands on M-16 rifles and M-60 machine guns with freaking live ammo.  Guns with blanks I can accept; weapons which could be issued to the rebels in Libya, well....not so much.

But such concerns would simply get in the way of the screenplay, which seems to be an examination of how easily teens can be indoctrinated into becoming soldiers and the inevitable clash of wills between the more gung-ho cadets (especially the one played by a very intense Tom Cruise) and the ones who want to find a less violent resolution to the face-off with the National Guard.

Thus, Taps earns three stars from this reviewer; I like the intensity and gravitas of the young actors and the channeling of Patton by George C. Scott, but I am annoyed by the script's not-so-subtle anti-military slant.