Gripping story with well-crafted characters

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

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.

Cannot for the life of me understand why this flick doesn't rate in the top 250.How can I count the wonders of Taps? Production values are superb. The story is like a fine wine; like something Polanski would take on. The metaphor is admittedly stark--some might call it a one note johnny--but the development is an enthralling meander of telling detail; a litany of ritual acting-out; a thorough riffing on the jarring central theme, and doing so as well as with any fine stage production.The acting is great, up and down the roster. The child actors range in skill from perfectly functionally fine to heartbreakingly sympathetic. Of course, mention should be made of the A-listers; They took their direction very well and created real pulsing, agonizing, spiritually caught-up life on the screen. And there's nothing I can say about the incomparable, late Mr. Scott that you don't already know.And there are no misses in post-production; it's a superb edit, with tremendous sound work. No technical flaws or mishaps got in the way of the flick's pressing import. In the end, you witnessed a challenge to your belief system. While the political hipsters have upgraded their focus to the economic force of the military-industrial complex, Taps reminds us that there's still something older, primal, and yes sinister that remains afoot. And we need to look at it.Taps shows it to us. Watch it and see.

Retired Brigadier General Harlan Bache (George C. Scott) runs the Bunker Hill Military Academy for boys. He appoints Cadet Brian Moreland (Timothy Hutton) as the leader Cadet Major. Alex Dwyer (Sean Penn) is a zen Cadet Captain. David Shawn (Tom Cruise) is the most militaristic Cadet Captain. During commencement, Bache shocks everyone with news that the board of trustees are tearing down the academy and selling off the land in a year's time. During a dance, local teens confront the cadets and Bache's pistol accidentally discharge killing one of the locals. Bache is arrested and has a heart attack. The cadets take over the campus The standoff escalates when the National Guard arrive led by Colonel Kerby (Ronny Cox).The setup is very clunky and slow. The local kids are cartoon characters. The locals are simple plot devices. The parents are given short-shrift. There is basically no adult supervision in the Academy. The whole thing is straining to establish a Lord of the Flies situation. There are some terrific young future stars at work. Tom Cruise does a very interesting intense character. After a fairly slow opening, the movie gets slightly better but it's hard to get on side with the cadets. The kid who runs out first is probably the bravest of anybody in the movie.

This was Sean Penn's first feature film and Tom Cruise's second feature film, so it is memorable for introducing such well known stars to the screen when they were young men. But the film is totally dominated by a magnificent bravura performance by Timothy Hutton, of astonishing power and conviction. The film is set in a boys' military academy called Bunker Hill Academy, in America. For people not familiar with such institutions, or indeed for all people unfamiliar with America, it is common for boys' boarding schools to be 'military academies', the very idea of such a thing being of course unknown in Britain. And by military they mean military, that is, the boys really wear uniforms all the time, drill like soldiers, and are subjected to military discipline. Many fathers think this 'makes a man of' their sons. What it can do, however, is scar them for life. (This happened in the late 19th century in Bohemia to the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, for instance.) Some boys thrive on this kind of thing, go into the Army eventually as a career, and are happy as clams. To each his own! Here we see a military academy to beat all military academies, one which is so military it surpasses the real Army itself. At the beginning of the film it is run by a headmaster who is a spell-binding patriarch who dazzles the cadets with his oratory, a retired general played by George C. Scott. Hutton plays a cadet who hero-worships him. It is the end of the school year, and Hutton has just been appointed Cadet Major (equivalent to Head Prefect) for the following year. That means he will be the commanding officer of the students, answerable only to the General. He has been told so often about the importance of loyalty and honour that when an unexpected event occurs, he duly does what he has been trained to do, he … well, that's just the problem … At Commencement Day, in the presence of all the parents, following the parade and file-past with elaborate salutes to the General (the boy officers even hold swords to their noses as they do 'eyes right', it is all far more elaborate than any drill I ever did, and I was a cadet officer in a non-military school when young and did that kind of thing, but not with real rifles and a sword up my nostrils like we see here), the General announces that the trustees of the Academy have decided to close the school and sell off the land to commercial developers. This shocks all the boys, who begin to think they should defend their 'country', i.e. their academy, like real soldiers. There is a conflict between 'town and gown' and the townies attack some of the cadets (although the word is not used in this film, such cadets are commonly known as 'bellhops' by boys in non-military boarding schools). In the melée, the General's pistol goes off accidentally and kills a boy from the town. He is then taken away by the police, leaving the closing school rudderless, as many of the teachers and more than half of the students leave for the summer. Some, however stay for 'the summer session', among them being Timothy Hutton who is now de facto in charge of the Academy, and Sean Penn and Tom Cruise leading figures amongst the other cadets. Some of the boys are only 11 or 12 years old, but most are between 16 and 18. They decide they are not going to let the developers get away with it, and so they follow all their military training and set up a defence of the school. Because the General had been more than a little gun-happy, he had stocked the school with huge quantities of guns and real ammunition. These are duly distributed amongst the cadets and they set up defensive positions, sandbags, barriers, and sentries patrolling the walls which surround the school. This erupts into violence and gunfire and becomes 'the real thing'. The cadets keep saying that honour dictates that they must defend their principles. They do a raid on the town in a truck which they stock with food, and they hunker down to await the life and death shootout. They are all prepared to die for their school. Of course, one can sympathise with their hatred of the commercial developers who want to destroy their school and all that they believe in just for the sake of money. Hating them is one thing, but shooting them is another. With no one in charge but the idealistic Hutton, the borderline between fantasy and reality collapses. The real Army comes and lays siege to the school, bringing in tanks. When a 12 year-old cadet is shot and killed by one of the real soldiers, half the cadets desert because they are terrified, but the rest remain, prepared to die for their beliefs. This film is a study of honour, but it shows that even honour, when carried to extremes which have lost touch with reality, can become dishonour without the people who believe in it even realizing it. The film is thus an extraordinarily thoughtful study of a noble principle carried to such extremes that young kids end up dying for their beliefs, because the grown-ups will not listen to them. The ending cannot be revealed, but to say that things become hyper-tense is an understatement. This is a knockout of a film, and it would make anyone, even the dullest person, think. And as we all know, thinking is the thing that most people try to avoid doing if at all possible. So if a film can make people think, then it does deserve all the support and admiration we can give it. This film is a masterpiece of serious examination of matters of conscience, and is extremely exciting and well made.