Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

As another reviewer pointed out, the whole story is contrived, with students at a mi8litary school having weaponry a real military school wouldn't have, the real military outside the school trying to end the situation not doing as it would have done in real life, and so forth. The idea wasn't even intended to be real-life anyway; it was meant to show how idealistic students go crazy with the idea of honor and end up confronting the outside world.The film is most notable for its cast of then-young actors such as Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton who would go on to bigger careers later on. More of a time capsule than a realistic drama.

"TAPS" from 1981 is a decent drama about cadets at a military academy who make a stand after the school board decides to shut the school down in favor of a condominium complex.Timothy Hutton plays the leader of the cadets whereas Sean Penn and Tom Cruise play his two top guys. Interestingly, Penn provides the voice of reason and Cruise the voice of extremism. George C. Scott plays the headmaster and wartime general that Hutton's character hero-worships."TAPS" is no where near as good as, say, "Dead Poets Society," but it's decent. There's an interesting subtext to mine in repeat viewings.The film runs 126 minutes and was shot at Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania and nearby Wayne.GRADE: C+ or B-

I just finished watching T*A*P*S for the first time in many years. It was, and still is, a powerful movie. The different characters were wonderfully written and played very well by the different actors.If you have never seen this movie I suggest doing so.I liked the whole movie. The story line was phenomenal. It's about a military school called Bunker Hill Military Academy and it's students. At the beginning of the movie it is the end of the school term and the start of summer vacation. Some of the students are staying for the summer, including Cadet Major Brian Moreland (Timothy Hutton), Cadet Captain Alex Dwyer (Sean Penn), and Cadet Captain David Shawn (Tom Cruise). The school's superintendent is General Harlan Bache (George C. Scott).Moreland is newly promoted to Cadet Major at the beginning of the movie. He is friends with Dwyer and Shawn, and he tries to emulate General Bache. At the commencement ceremony for the out going senior class General Bache reveals that the board of trustees have decided to close the school at the end of the next school year. They want to make way for a condominium complex.One very powerful scene is when the remaining cadets are having a dance. Some local teens are harassing arriving guests and the cadets. Moreland politely asked the teens to move along. One of the teens walked up to Moreland and threw a punch. As Moreland and the other cadets are defending themselves one cadet runs and gets General Bache. As soon as Bache attempts to stop the melee one of the teens jumps on his back and grabs for his sidearm. The teen gets the handgun loose from the holster and pulls the trigger. Bache didn't know that there was a live round in the chamber. The teen who first attacked Moreland was shot in the chest and died instantly. The police are called and Bache is taken into custody.The following day the board members come to the academy to do inventory of the weapons located there. Moreland realizes what is going on and before the sheriff comes to confiscate the arsenal, Moreland takes them. Moreland wants the academy to stay open. He and the remaining student body take control of the academy and refuse to surrender. At one point, Moreland's father comes to negotiate the surrender, it does not go well.Even though Moreland is friends with both Dwyer and Shawn, the animosity between Dwyer and Shawn is very evident. In one scene it is revealed to Moreland that Shawn has given orders to shoot anyone coming over, around or under the walls by the sentries. Moreland barely blinks, saying that those were the proper orders to give. The tension on Moreland gets to be too much when twice several students leave, when asked, rather than stay to defend their school. As time goes on, one student is burned in an accident after the power was turned off and another student was shot because the National Guard unit that arrived thought he was firing at them (he wasn't).After Moreland finds out that Bache passed away from a heart attack Moreland begins to question whether he and the other cadets are doing the right thing. Dwyer attempts and succeeds in talking Moreland into surrendering. Shawn has other plans. The power really goes to his head and he starts firing on the National Guard. The National Guard returns fire and eventually kills Shawn. Moreland attempts to save Shawn but is killed also. Dwyer carries his friends body from the barracks followed by Colonel Kerby (Ronnie Cox).This is a adrenaline filled movie that ends very tragically. It's about teenagers, who are sent to a military school for one reason or another, taught to be soldiers and defend their rights. But they misread what they are taught, and end up in a world of hurt. The movie ends with the cadets surrendering and Dwyer carrying Moreland out the front gate.I like movies like these. I like how it actually has a plot that goes from A to Z. The acting in this movie is pretty good. I give this 10 stars out of 10. Even though it is a dated movie, and some of the sentimentality is different between the time it was made and today, it's still pretty good.

We are at Bunker Hill Military Academy, a prep school with students ranging in age from, say, high-school seniors to boys so small that they can't possibly have experienced any of the delights of puberty. The cadet corps is run by proud Timothy Hutton. His immediate subordinates include the sensible Sean Penn -- yes, sensible -- and the semi-psychotic Tom Cruise. In overall command is the avuncular General George C. Scott.The problem is that, as Scott announces to the cadets, the school will be closed and sold for its real estate value next Fall. They are going to mow the place down and build condominiums. Scott dies promptly of a heart attack and, led by Cadet Major Hutton, most of the kids confiscate the stores of weapons and lay down a list of demands before they will allow the school to be dissolved. I was all on the side of the cadets. Not that I love military academies but that I hate condominiums. It's rather like why I'm a vegetarian. I hate the taste and texture of vegetables but I love to kill them by eating them raw or boiling them.This film sounds like it has a lot of social relevance -- the military and patriots and men of honor on one side, and the peace-mongering wussies who never had a fist fight on the other. Now we're all going to refight the Vietnam War.But it's not like that at all. Timothy Hutton is a bright kid with leadership qualities only, as it's explained somewhat clumsily, he has reason to hate his father, who is a Sergeant Major, and has found a substitute in General George C. Scott. And therein lies the problem. Hutton has absorbed only part of Scott's message about self discipline, and death before dishonor, and all that elementary stuff. After all, he's only seventeen. It's only with a little seasoning that we can begin to look behind the buzz words.Hutton is supported by Penn because Penn has "never walked out on a friend," and it's Penn who finally talks Hutton into ordering the adoption of another common tactic -- "declare victory and depart the field." But Tom Cruise is the genuine nut job aboard for this adventure into terra incognito. Throughout, he's always been something of a martinet. He is the leader of a group of red berets. I don't know exactly what they're function is but it appears to be something like the Gestapo's. And while the rest of the cadet corps is marching sullenly and weaponless towards the gate where the National Guard is waiting, Cruise cuts loose from an upper window with an M-60 screaming, "It's beautiful! It's BEAUTIFUL!" The performances are all pretty good without any being exceptional. The chief weakness is in the script. It's opened up a whole can of worms and doesn't want to get its fingers dirty by digging into it. The problem with pride, honor, and a feeling of knowing more than others, is that that whole assemblage of attitudes can't exist without an enemy. If you're superior, then you must by definition be superior to someone else. In this case, there are only off-hand references to the pencil-pushers and bean counters. Not that the film presents external forces -- the local cops and the National Guard -- as anything other than reasonable or even perfect. But solidarity is self reinforcing. It feels so good to be part of a group that's even only temporarily powerful that often the original goal is lost sight of. That's what happened during the prison riots at Attica. The governor granted some of the inmates demands and the inmates ripped up the concession to great cheers from the throng. Finally the governor granted ALL their wishes -- and an inmate in the center of the yard ripped them up to great cheers from the throng. The point was no longer to have their wishes granted but to relish the momentary sense of power.And the distinction between civilian power over the military is hardly mentioned. It's one of the lessons that Scott apparently never passed on, but it's a fundamental one. It's why our Commander-in-Chief is called a "president" and not a "generalissimo." Here's something the governor and the National Guard might have tried. They might have simply waited the kids out. What the heck. They couldn't have had that much food. The electricity and water could have been shut down. Enthusiasm for the cause was hardly universal -- about half of them quit. Morale would have crumbled eventually. Fads fade quickly among teens.And Tom Cruise's final insane outburst was completely unjustified by what we'd learned of his character earlier, but then it had to happen or we'd all have been denied the pleasure of the final shoot out. We're built for speed and action, not waiting patiently, not thinking things through logically. In a sense, Tom Cruise stands in for part of all of us. And so do the proud Timothy Hutton and the sensible Sean Penn. I hope when we face our next crisis, whether national or personal, we can find some middle ground.