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Why so much hype?

Great Film overall

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Taps is a 1981 movie that stars the late George C.Scott,Timothy Hutton,Ronny Cox and introduced future Hollywood superstars,Sean Penn and Tom Cruise.The story was about how military cadets revolted to the announcement that their school,Bunker Hill Military Academy, a military school institution, is to be torn down and replaced with commercial condominiums.This sets off the young cadets led by their commander General Harlan Bache,who unfortunately passed away during an incident.With the passing of General Bache,the students continued their revolt under the command of a student cadet major,Cadet Major Brian Moreland.Eventaully,the cadets seize the campus, refuse entry of the construction crews and ultimately confront the real military led by Colonel Kerby.Aside from that,the story also presented two interesting characters in Cadet Captain Alex Dwyer and Cadet Captain David Shawn.The film's theme was about military idealism and how the cadets have yet to realize what the real world is all about.It was a great to see how twisted ideas and priorities can help the cadets realize their immaturity and gain knowledge on what the real world is all about.

"It's beautiful man! It's beautiful!" – Tom Cruise ("Taps")"Taps" is a confused but entertaining military drama about a group of young military school cadets (led by a kid called Brian Moreland) who take over their military school in order to save it from closing. "Father Sky", the novel upon which the film was based, was a light satire which used its central siege to examine the herd mentality of the military and to poke fun at the way anti-war protesters are often just as crazy and militant as those they rally against.This film is too timid to bash either the military or the ultra-left, however, and instead paints Brian Moreland as a young and confused Colonel Kurtz figure who hijacks a military school because he wants to "preserve military traditions". As the military school is being shut down, Moreland feels as though he is being "denied honour" and "prestige". He thus starts a little war - which all the other cadets join in on - and justifies his actions by saying that he's honourably trying to "preserve the traditions of the school" and "prevent it from being closed", when in reality he simply wants to glorify himself with a little combat. The film thus examines the naive appeal of war, what separates "glory hounds" from "real soldiers", and points out how ridiculously dishonourable it is to start a war solely for the purposes of "finding honour". Abstract this further, and you have a comment on the Vietnam war: a government starting a war to "preserve the honour of democracy" when in reality it seeks only to install its own power.7.9/10 – Sean Penn, Tom Cruise, George C Scott and Timothy Hutton make up for director Harold Becker's flat direction. The film is famous for a pre-Scientology Tom Cruise playing a psycho soldier who yells "It's beautiful man!" whilst gunning down his fellow Americans. Xenu would not be proud.Worth one viewing.

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.

Taps is about the cadets of Bunker Hill Military Academy and their commanding officer, George C. Scott, and their reaction to the news of the closing of the Academy.Scott announces at the graduation that the next year will be the final year of Bunker Hill. The Board of Trustees is selling off the place for its prime real estate value to be used for condominium development. Certainly an occurrence we've seen all over the country in many places and not something really desirable in many.Cadet Major Timothy Hutton knows he will head the last graduating class at Bunker Hill. He and fellow cadets like Sean Penn and Tom Cruise aren't taking it lying down. They may be military cadets, but they've seen and grown up with student protests. Only these students have weapons and are trained in their use. Can you really blame the cadets like Hutton who've actually in fact forgotten that soldiers carry out and don't make policy? I think it was significant that during the course of Taps it's mentioned that George C. Scott served with General Douglas MacArthur who gave him a sword for his service. It's also mentioned that Scott was passed over for promotion an advancement beyond being a brigadier general and was retired comfortably out to pasture at the Academy.Scott's not the same kind of military man you see in Patton. Rather he's a lot like the Patton you see in that television film, Patton, the Last Days. A man so totally out of his element that when the accident and broken neck occurred he'd lost his will to live.Anyway after a scuffle with some of the town louts who are less than enamored of Bunker Hill's military tradition. A town kid is accidentally killed when he tries to get Scott's military issue pistol and it discharges. In a court of law, the man would have been acquitted, but Scott answers to a higher law he lives by. That scuffle threatens to close the school even for the last year and the kids seize it. It's a confrontation then between idealistic and wrongheaded youth and the real forces of law enforcement.Ronny Cox contributes a very nice performance as the commanding general of the National Guard trying to keep a lid on the situation. His scenes with the idealistic and obstinate Hutton are the highlight of the film for me.Tom Cruise and Sean Penn got their first real notice in this film right at the start of their respective mega-careers. Hutton has a nice followup to his Oscar winning performance from Ordinary People. And George C. Scott is, George C. Scott.