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So much average

hyped garbage

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This movie has been one of my favorites since I saw it shortly after it's release. Alan Parker is a brilliant film maker and here he is at the top of his game along with Modine and Cage who've never been better. The type of movie that gets under your skin and stays with you for days - the images -visually/musically are truly haunting and quite moving. At it's core this is a movie about friendship - and the actions of one friend to bring his friend back to reality so they can in a sense save each other. Although, a very different movie, I put this up there with Shawshank and Stand By Me when it comes to movies about the importance of friendship.**SOILER ALERT** Personally, I felt it was a brilliant ending -going from a possibly horrifically sad moment to sudden surprise hilarity (relief)- much better than the ending in the book which really didn't have much going on. It's also better than the original screenplay ending which had both Birdy and Al's characters plunging to their death. The film makers made the right choice in keeping the tone the movie originally set -the 'feeling of friendship' (prankster youths if you will) going - and that even with their scars these guys are going to be okay because they have each other.

Birdy is a young man growing up in Philadelphia in the nineteen-sixties who is obsessed with birds and thoughts of flight. He and his friend Al are sent to fight in Vietnam but are shipped back with both physical and mental wounds. As Birdy withdraws into a silent catatonia, can Al bring him out of his dream world ?Based on a book by William Wharton, this tender character study of friendship, madness and the haunting effects of war is extremely well written and directed, and beautifully played by the two leads. How much you empathise with Birdy depends very much on your experiences I guess, but I find his devotion to learning to fly and his bewilderment at many of the ridiculous qualities of people very easy to identify with. He is a lunatic in the pure sense that as his obsession deepens the gulf between reality and his dreams doesn't matter to him, but he's a well-adjusted lunatic who understands other people but simply isn't interested in behaving like them. His concept that birds fly more through self-confidence and a respect for the properties of air (as opposed to more mundane issues like weight and velocity) is incredibly seductive and thought-provoking. The movie really makes you think about the damage society does to people, both on an everyday suburban level (Birdy's mother, Al's father) and a historical/global level (the horrors of combat). If it has a flaw it's that the lengthy scenes in the military sanitarium are grey, talky and inevitably one-sided, in sharp contrast to the vivid slice-of-life sections in Philly, all of which are full of humour and pathos (the dog-hunting sequence is particularly gleeful and horrible). Overall however it's extraordinarily beautiful - Michael Seresin's photography is haunting and absorbing, lingering over dark blue spaces and dirty backyards or soaring skyward as Birdy escapes into his fantasies. Equally powerful is Peter Gabriel's brooding, rich, esoteric sequencer music which (uniquely in film scoring history I think) was culled, reconceived and re-recorded from samples of songs from his previous two studio albums. The music lurks around every scene, mewling and pulsing like some animated force, providing a voice for Birdy's voiceless inner state. Cage and Modine are both excellent, with a fine support cast and a great troupe of animal actors who duly receive prominent credits - this must be the only film to employ a stunt canary. There were a slew of 'Nam films made in the mid-eighties (Hamburger Hill, Platoon, Gardens Of Stone) and whilst this fits that category it's about much more than just what's now referred to as post-traumatic stress disorder. It's about searching for an escape from everything, a point of view which brings extreme clarity and which no-one else can attain. A fine drama.

Over 2 hours of film ending with 2 of the lamest 2 jokes. "There wasn't anything I wanted to say" and the suggestion he had tried to fly.Nothing happens of any significance and the story of what broke birdy was covered in literally 30 seconds.In short Mathew's obsessed with birds and his life was rather dull before he turned into a mute. Cages character is of a cool man about town who's character wouldn't have spent a minute hanging around with Modines unless they were stuck on an island, even then I wouldn't bet on it.I guess you're supposed to think at the end of the movie they are going to go back to acting like teenagers again ?

A special trip beyond masks and illusions, innocent lies and slippery politeness.A film about truth and its orations, about the honest manner to live and to trust, about the cruel relation with the past and about refuges.Fight against the Angel and image of world.The passages of memory and recreation of golden age.Exploration, with depressing flavor, of a fragile way, touching corpses of dreams, waiting and deconstructing old facts in a personal puzzle.It is not a film about pain, desire, war, mental illness or friendship. It is not a Vietnamese drama or film about birds."Birdy" is pledge for discover the sense of yourself. A beautiful trip in the nooks of innocence and appearances, a form of spell without magic lights.Birdy is Don Quixote ,prince Myshkin or Oblomov. The passion for birds is not a hobby or mask of frustrations but only manner to escape beyond an unintelligible universe.The interpretation of Modine is brilliant. And Nicholas Cage- great actor in the skin of a delicate character.Splendid film and object of profound reflection.In fact, instrument of catharsis.