Cloak & Dagger - a Boy Living in a Fantasy World Gets a Real Life Adventure

Watching "Cloak & Dagger" for the first time in over a decade (maybe even longer than that) was a kick especially when viewing it in a different perspective. I think I was 13 or 14 when I last saw it, having recorded the movie on VHS when it was on channel 13, KCOP Los Angeles, and I proceeded to watch it several hundred times. It stars Henry Thomas in one of his post "E.T." movies as Davey Osborne, an 11-year old boy who escapes from reality into the world of Cloak & Dagger where he idolizes heroic spy Jack Flack who has long since become his imaginary friend who looks almost exactly like his father. Bored with life and yearning for a real adventure, Davey and his next door neighbor Kim (a precocious Christina Nigra) embark to downtown San Antonio where he inadvertently witnesses a murder and gets hold of a game cartridge of the Cloak & Dagger video game with top secret information. Davey's wish of a real adventure comes true, but it all becomes a reminder of what Augustus Hill once said on the HBO prison drama "Oz":

"Be careful what you wish for brother! Be very, very careful..."

Naturally, most people don't believe Davey when he tries to explain what happened, not even his father who loves him dearly but has become rather distant emotionally. Once again, we have a movie which continues the theme of parents not listening to their kids until it is much too late. Then again, if parents did listen to their kids, there wouldn't be a movie like this in the first place. We also find that Davey is still grieving the loss of his mother who had recently passed away (it's never said how she died exactly) which quickly explains his constant escapes into a fantasy world. These elements combine together to make Hal believably dubious of his son's claims, adding it all up the overactive imagination of a child. This makes it all the more easy for the bad guys to try and capture him, and they are not about to show him mercy just because he is a little boy.

I still remember seeing trailers on television for "Cloak & Dagger" just as it was coming out. Back then, the movie looked a little too scary for me to sit through, and my brother had already scared me off from seeing "Gremlins" (but that had more to do with Santa Claus than anything else). Some kids teased me and said it would be too intense for me, but they could have been right (not that I would have told them that mind you). Once the film made its television debut where the "good stuff" was all cut out, it seemed easier to take in. Plus, seeing Henry Thomas with a gun excited me to no end. For once, the children were going to get to defend themselves without the help of adults! Now please keep in mind, I was a little boy playing with water pistols (even though my parents didn't want me to) when "Cloak & Dagger" originally came out, and I had yet to learn about the harsh realities of the real world.

Seeing this at the New Beverly Cinema in a double feature with "Wargames" (also starring Dabney Coleman), Julie Marchese made the point that for a PG movie, "Cloak & Dagger" is actually pretty brutal! You have adults shooting at kids, Henry Thomas ends up killing a guy, another character looks like they got shot in the eye, and you have adults smoking cigarettes in front of kids! You would not see anything like that in a PG rated movie these days (PG-13 movies are a different story), not even the bad guy telling a 11 year-old boy just how much he is going to enjoy blowing his kneecaps off in such a cold fashion. Parents would go ballistic today if they saw even a hint of that going on.

But for what it's worth, "Cloak & Dagger" certainly doesn't glamorize real life violence and does succeed in making a distinction between make believe and the brutality of human nature (as much as can be allowed in a PG movie anyway). The movie is really more of a coming of age story where Davey grows up after discovering that these imaginary adventures are nothing compared to the real ones which are far too frightening to deal with. Davey also comes to realize this in the most inconvenient way possible for a kid who hasn't even reached puberty yet.

Henry Thomas' performance in "Cloak & Dagger" was proof that his excellent performance in "E.T." (one of the best ever given by a child actor) was no fluke. What I love about his work here is that you never really catch him acting. Everything he does comes from a believable place, and the emotions he expresses never ever seem forced or unnatural. Even as the movie heads into the inescapable territory of illogic that is typically inescapable in the action genre, Thomas remains the emotional center of the story and he keeps us watching to the very end. It's hard enough to ask a pre-teen to carry any feature length movie on their shoulders, but Thomas had the appearance of a pro who make his acting seem so effortless in retrospect.

The other big actor in "Cloak & Dagger" is Dabney Coleman who back in the 80's seemed to be in every other movie being made (an American Michael Caine perhaps). Dabney plays both Davey's Air Force father Hal Osborne as well as his imaginary hero Jack Flack. This movie was filmed back in 1984 long before the advent of digital effects, so of course we never see Dabney's characters sharing the screen with each other simultaneously. Coleman is great in both roles, and you really have to appreciate his performance as Hal because it could have been your typically clichéd one-note daddy character. Throughout, he rides a good balance between being the disciplinarian and the sympathetic father who remembers what his life was like as a kid. Like his son, Hal wanted to be a hero too.

But it's very clear that Dabney is having even more fun as superspy Jack Flack who may not be as smooth or as dashing as 007, but he's still very clever in his own mustached way. All that's missing off of him is a patch over one eye, but Kurt Russell pretty much beat him to that character detail in "Escape From New York." Seeing Dabney reacting to his performance as Hal is good for a few laughs as Flack never stops deriding his lack of belief and faith in his son.

Now the bad guys here are the typical one-dimensional types you usually find in movies like this, but being that this is a relic from the 80's, that's all good and fine. Eloy Casados plays Alvarez (a lot of villains end up with that name it seems) as your stone faced henchman; the kind of guy who smirks more than he smiles, and that's not because he's in a good mood. In fact, a guy like him is typically in a foul mood and never really happy about anything. You know, he's the one who is so the life of the party (whatever). I also love how he shoots at Henry Thomas from only a few feet away and STILL COMPLETELY MISSES HIM. You'd think the bad guys would have all the time in the world to learn how to shoot, but this one is a not so rare exception!

Then you have Haverman who is played by former professional football player Tim Rossovich. With his strong body and build, he's like the Incredible Hulk as a bad guy except he doesn't turn green or rip off his clothes when he gets pissed (his jeans did look a little too tight though). The door's locked? This guy just smashes right through it as if it were no big thing. You get to see him doing that to where I was just waiting for him to say:

"HAVERMAN SMASH!!!"

But the main baddie of "Cloak & Dagger" is Rice (not to be mistaken for the San Francisco treat), and he is played by Michael Murphy in a truly chilling performance. Seriously, for a PG-rated movie, Rice is a very vicious villain. Murphy, still a few years away from playing the spineless mayor of Gotham in "Batman Returns," gives you the perfect kind of bad guy you love to despise with every fiber of your being. Murphy makes you believe that his character would think nothing of killing a kid that stood in the way of his ultimate goal; delivering government secrets to spies. Man, I remember wanting to see him get his just desserts as soon as he appeared onscreen.

We also have to talk about scene stealer Christina Nigra who plays Davey's not-imaginary friend, Kim. She was not quite the child actor that Henry was at that age, but her sassy little attitude makes for some great moments, especially when she informs her mother that Davey's father is not her type. She gets annoyed with Davey when he takes things a little too far and embarrasses her, but even she comes to admit that he is nowhere close to being boring. Christina also holds her own in front of the airport police chief as he smokes a cigarette in very close proximity to her. You don't even see her complaining about the smoke. Maybe the anti-smoking campaigns hadn't reached her school yet.

I took the time to check out Christina's resume on IMDB, and she went on to do a lot of work in television before going off to law school. She's now a Municipal Attorney but still does some acting here and there which includes a stint on the stage in "Of Mice and Men" (it's safe to say she did not get cast as Lenny).

There are a couple of other familiar faces to be found in "Cloak & Dagger," and one of them is the late Robert DoQui whose subdued performance as Lt. Fleming is the polar opposite of the hard nosed and easily irritated law enforcement chief we saw him portray in the "Robocop" trilogy. William Forsythe also shows up as Davey's other friend Morris, and seriously, Will doesn't look like he has aged or sound any different since 1984. Even Louie Anderson is in the movie for less than a minute as a hygienically challenged taxi cab driver who offers to give Davey a ride to the airport but only with $15 dollars in advance. Louie turns him down flat when Davey comes up broke. What a prick!

"Cloak & Dagger" was directed by Richard Franklin from a screenplay written by Tom Holland, and the two of them were just coming off of their collective success with "Psycho II." It all makes me wonder if that was why they got away with what they did on this motion picture (they wouldn't today). In a lot of ways it's a change of pace for these two, but it does get to be intense in a whole other way. Both are also backed up by an adventurous kind of film score by Brian May. My friend who I saw the double feature with thought it sucked, but I beg to differ.

So much has changed in the world since "Cloak & Dagger" first came out, and it now seems astonishing just how dark it was compared to the movies that come out today with a PG rating. It was made back when you didn't need a plane ticket to get through security screening, and you could hang out with your loved ones at the gate before their plane took off. You could smoke on airplanes back then as well. What hasn't changed or weakened through the passing of time are the performances of Henry Thomas and Dabney Coleman. Both are a reason why it managed to find such a large audience in VHS and DVD instead of the movie theaters where it flopped.

"Cloak & Dagger" could have been nothing more than a big budget Atari commercial, but it was not even close to being that. Most movies like this don't feel as genuine in their emotions as this one does, nor do they feature adults smoking cigarettes in front of kids. The MPAA would simply use that as a stupid justification to give a movie an R rating, and that's even if it is meant for kids to watch. Oh the humanity!

***½ out of ****