T.A.P.S. - this is a really terrible movie

Cafe Society
1

I just watched the famous movie T.A.P.S. for the first time, although most people already saw it long ago. I hardly ever watch television - the World Series and the Super Bowl are the only times I ever willingly watch TV, and any other time that I see something on TV will generally be at someone else’s house who already has it on. So there are a lot of movies, shows and other pop cultural things that I’m out of the loop with regards to, because of this. Anyway, I watched this film, and was dumb-founded by what a preposterous story it was.

Tom Cruise and Sean Penn’s acting did not save the movie, nor did George C. Scott playing a Patton-esque General in charge of the military academy (he was only in a small number of short scenes.) The story itself was patently absurd and I found it very hard to suspend my disbelief.

I’m really supposed to think that a student at a military academy who is intelligent enough to rise to the highest ranking cadet position (Major) would orchestrate a forceful takeover of the academy, and then hold a deputy sheriff at gun-point?

The older cadets would let the little kids (11-12 years old) run out in fatigues with M-16 rifles, exposed to gunfire and tanks, taking up positions behind sandbags with 18 year olds? I would think that their first order of business, in the event of them actually implementing this rebellion, would be to take all the little kids and get them safely fortified inside the building, instead of leaving them to be shot out in the open. If nothing else, they should have realized that the little kids being shot would hurt their morale and undermine their cause in the government’s eyes.

Tom Cruise’s character, all of a sudden, turns into a psychopath and shoots the Army Colonel (Ronny Cox) from the window? (And then the Colonel gets up, after being shot, seemingly unfazed, and continues shouting out orders and directing the operation? I’m supposed to believe that they would allow a Colonel to keep running around after taking TWO HITS to the torso from an M-16?) And then Cruise starts laying into them with a machine gun, screaming “It’s beautiful, man!” like a deranged lunatic? From whence came this sudden bizarre transformation of his character?

And the idea that such a huge number of cadets at this military academy would be willing to go up against the NATIONAL GUARD with tanks, helicopters and an unending supply of fully-grown, trained soldiers? Just because the school is going to be shut down? They would die for that?

I don’t get it. How did this movie ever even get made, let alone nominated for an Academy Award?

2

It’s just called “Taps”. Like the song.

3

Do military schools even have real munitions and live ammo? Why would a something which essentially a private high school have M60’s?

Also, there’s no way the US military would roll up on a school full of kids with tanks and open fire. That would be political madness. The OP is right. The movie is absurd from start too finish.

4

I saw it when I was eleven or so. The scene where the kid caught on fire upset me for years.

5

It WASN’T nominated for any Oscars. Tim Hutton was nominated for a Golden Globe, back when that award was still considered a joke.

The reviews it received ranged from horrible to mediocre.

My sense was, it wasn’t SUPPOSED to be “realistic.” It was supposed to be a metaphor, a la “Lord of the Flies,” for the way militarism brainwashes nice kids and turns them into savage killers.

6

The school having such unlikely weaponry was half-assed explained as George C. Scott’s having accumulated it during the Cold War in case of Commie invasion. If they had armed the cadets with WWII-Korean War era weaponry, that would have made the explanation a tad bit more believable.

7

Well, I thought it was utterly preposterous - yet great fun nonetheless.

8

And when Tim Hutton had been nominated for Ordinary People and was considered the hottest young actor of his generation (who knew that it was really Tom Hanks?)

I think I was 17 when it came out and had a mad crush on Tim Hutton at that point in time, which meant I saw it three or four times and was convinced it was brilliant cinema. And that was why it got made. It had all the angst to sell to seventeen year old girls, and all the shooting and blowing stuff up to sell to seventeen year old boys.

9

Hey, any movie where Tom Cruise gets killed by machine gun fire can’t be all bad.

10

My friends and I used to watch this movie over and over again. We used to wear camouflage t-shirts and rent Taps and gather in a group in the only house on the block that had one of them new-fangled front-loading VCR machines and watch this thing three or four times a year. Then we’d troop out to the corn fields a couple miles away and hide between the stalks and play our own little capture the flag games.

I’ve sort of avoided watching it now that I’m (ahem) grown up. I’d rather remember it as awesome.

One thing we did learn: those red berets may have looked cool in the movie, but wearing them in the field just made you an easy target.

thwartme

11

It was popular in my area … but then, I lived near VFMA, where it was filmed. One of my brothers went there.

All I remember now is that, when the cadets were killed, the director made a point of showing blood coming out of their mouths. Every single time.

“OK. You’ve been shot. Cue blood capsule … NOW!”

12

I attended Missouri Military Academy from 1978 - 1984 for 7th through 12th grades. I wasn’t a bad kid; it was a family tradition kind of thing.*

We were issued 1903 Springfield rifles (as in WWI surplus) for use in drill. All of these rifles had their firing pins removed. They were kept locked up in the locked armory room in the locked basement of the locked field house. They had to be checked out for drill use (Saturday morning practice, Sunday afternoon parade) and checked back in. In short, there was NO WAY to keep one, and even if you did get one, it didn’t have a firing pin.

We did use .22 rifles for target shooting for (1) everyone to use to qualify for the JROTC small bore rifle medals and (2) for the varsity and junior varsity target shooting teams. These were kept locked in safes in the locked rifle range in the locked basement of the locked field house. The ammunition was kept locked in a separate safe.

MMA was not a totally unpleasant place to be, but I guarantee that if the school faced closure, not even the most rabid geek would be willing to fight to keep the place open. There were no girls, no beer, lots of crap (shoe shining, brass shining, drill, etc.) that didn’t exactly endear us to the school.

As for the movie with the M16s and other ordinance - - that’s pure fabrication on the part of the writers and directors.

13

As a graduate of Valley Forge Military Academy…(where the movie was filmed), I can say that the only live ammunition kept on campus was at the firing range. They were .22s and hardly the kind of ordinance needed to take over a school.

It was kind of cool to see my school getting shot up though. I was one of the “problem” kids sent there for the discipline. Shoe shining, brass polishing, hospital corners and a trumpet being blown in my ear at 5 am are my high school memories.

That being said…it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. The friends I shared the misery with will be brothers for the rest of my life.

14

Just like Dangerosa, I was in my mid-teens when it came out.
I was really blown away, swept up in the movie. I loved the Timothy Hutton character and was strangely intrigued by Tom Cruise as a violent psycho.
Unfortunately, after thinking about the plot and whether it was remotely feasible, I reluctantly had to lower my estimation of the movie.
But in those days I had no cable TV and no VCR and going to a movie at all was a special treat.
Watching it today would probably make me cringe just remembering how awesome I thought it was at the time.

15

Ditto. I went to military school too, at roughly the same time. We had heavy-as-fuck 30.06s for drill team (I was the captain of the “crack squad,” that performed with twirling guns). We did not do target shooting, so there was no ammunition of any kind on our campus.

Yeah, *Taps *sucked. But the shower scenes are kinda nostalgic for me . . . :o

16

It sucked. Nothing worthwhile in that movie. It was a complete waste of…let’s see…$3.00. Give or take.

17

One of my best friends went there back in the late 70s.

18

I could never figure out why the National Guard was called in, instead of, oh, the local S.W.A.T. team.
I slightly better movie in the Military Academy genre is Toy Soldiers staring Sean Astin, Wil Wheaton, R. Lee Ermey and Louis Gossett Jr… Just as silly, but pretty cool.

19

The Lords of Discipline wasn’t bad either.

20

Perhaps the reason that Taps got made was the same as the reason that If . . . got made - because there are as many people who fantasized about going crazy with guns at an American military school as people who fantasized about shooting up an English public school.