Taps
25th Anniversary Special EditionTrailer Sheesh, I haven't seen
Taps since maybe the mid-80's and up till around 83-84, I probably had seen the movie a good 20-25 times because it was in high rotation on
HBO at the time. Since then, it of course fell off my radar with the exception of one scene in particular. Whenever the name
Tom Cruise is mentioned, the first thing that pops into my mind is of course the "It's Beautiful, man! Beautiful" scene. It's so damn iconic that it's hard to forget. When
Taps is talked about, everyone immediately thinks of the core 3 actors that make up the film:
Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn and
Tom Cruise. But having just watched this, the biggest mind f*ck for me was seeing a couple of actors that I didn't even know were in the film. I'm speaking about
Giancarlo Esposito and
Evan Handler.
I've become a huge fan of
Esposito over the years. For those that don't know the name, he's left his biggest mark on
Breaking Bad and can currently be seen in
Revolution. As for
Handler, I didn't even know it was him at all. I knew he looked familiar, but I just couldn't place his face. It wasn't until I saw the credits did my jaw hit the floor. It was the full head of hair that threw me off because I've only known of him as an actor as a bald man. He is best known for his role in
Californication.
I was very very young when I first saw Taps and I certainly didn't appreciate the casting of
George C. Scott as
General Harlan Bache. Even though I haven't seen the movie in ages, I did come to realize the importance in getting THE MAN that played Patton, which when you think about it, made perfect sense and was a stroke of genius by the casting director.
Ronny Cox is good as always. I can definitely recommend this as a
Rent. The acting really does hold up well all these years later and Cruise steals the movie outright. Rent it for sure, but keep in mind that the movie comes from a different era and may seem slow compared to today's films.