taps tom cruise scene

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Military cadets take extreme measures to ensure the future of their academy when its existence is threatened by local condo developers. Military cadets take extreme measures to ensure the future of their academy when its existence is threatened by local condo developers. Military cadets take extreme measures to ensure the future of their academy when its existence is threatened by local condo developers.

Harold Becker
Darryl Ponicsan
Robert Mark Kamen
James Lineberger
George C. Scott
Timothy Hutton
84 User reviews
30 Critic reviews
49 Metascore
1 nomination

General Harlan Bache

Brian Moreland

Colonel Kerby

David Shawn
Charlie Auden

Edward West

Derek Mellott

J.C. Pierce

Billy Harris
John Cooper

Mst. Sgt. Kevin Moreland

Dean Ferris

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Trivia Prior to the production of the film, the key actors - Timothy Hutton , Sean Penn , Tom Cruise and others - were required to participate in a 45-day-long period of orientation with the students of Valley Forge Military Academy. They were given uniforms, borrowed from their real life counterparts at the school and given authentic military haircuts. They slept in campus barracks and were subjected to the same rigors and hardship that all Valley Forge cadets went through. While most of the actors enjoyed and excelled at their orientation, Cruise opted to leave the training for the comforts of a nearby hotel until filming began.
Goofs When the townie youth is shot, it is actually the youngster on the general's (George C. Scott's) back that is holding the gun, not the general, though everyone, including the general, indicates the general shot him. The gun is in the general's hand when the camera pans back after the shooting.

[Firing machine gun]

David Shawn : It's beautiful, man!

Alternate versions The Amazon streaming version of the film replaces The Doors, Stevie Nicks, and The Pointer Sisters songs with generic music.
Connections Featured in Sneak Previews: Taps, Cinderella, Taxi Zum Klo, Heartbeeps (1981)
Soundtracks Light My Fire Written by Robby Krieger (as The Doors), Ray Manzarek (as The Doors), John Densmore (as The Doors) and Jim Morrison (as The Doors) Performed by The Doors

User reviews 84

fortethewriter
Mar 16, 2011
How long is Taps? Powered by Alexa
December 25, 1981 (United States)
United States
Die Kadetten von Bunker Hill
Valley Forge Military Academy & Junior College - 1001 Eagle Road, Wayne, Pennsylvania, USA
Major Studio Partners
Twentieth Century Fox
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$14,000,000 (estimated)
$35,856,053
Dec 13, 1981

Technical specs

Runtime 2 hours 6 minutes

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“Taps” is a meditation on two subjects for which some adolescents have a great capacity: idealism and authoritarianism. It takes place in a realistic setting (it was shot on location at Valley Forge Military Academy), but it is not intended as a realistic film. There are all sorts of clues, including the pointed absence of all but one of the academy's adult faculty members, to indicate that TAPS, like the emotionally similar “ Lord Of The Flies ,” is using its realistic texture as a setting for a fantasy about human nature.

The film begins with an emotionally stirring commencement exercise at Bunker Hill Military Academy (as the school is called in the film). Sousa marches fill the air, the cadets march around the parade ground looking gloriously proud of themselves, and the reviewing stand is dominated by the legendary old General Harlan Bache, the academy's commander. Bache is played by George C. Scott , and it is probably no accident that his performance in this movie echoes his title role in “ Patton ” (1970): He is an iron-willed and yet incurably romantic professional soldier.

We soon meet the leading upperclassman, Brian Moreland ( Timothy Hutton ). He has been selected to lead the cadet corps next year. In one of the most important evenings of his life, he is granted the great privilege of having dinner with old General Bache and sipping some of the old man's brandy. Soon after, however, this whole network of discipline, glory, and tradition is destroyed when it's revealed that the school's pigheaded trustees intend to sell the school and its land to some condominium developers (it is almost worth the price of admission to hear Scott pronounce "condominiums"). Bache is removed from the scene, in a dramatic development I will not reveal. And then Moreland, the cadet commander, takes inventory of the school's supplies of weapons and decides to lead the student body in making a stand for it. They'll take over the school in a military occupation, bar the gates, mount machine guns, and guard posts, and issue a set of demands designed to save the school.

The central passages of “Taps” are devoted to this scheme. The students barricade themselves in the school grounds, the police and National Guard surround the school, and a standoff develops. Meanwhile, within the student body, tensions develop between those kids who are unstable and a little too violent, and those who would secretly rather be on the outside looking in. Hutton, as Moreland, does a lot of learning and soul-searching as he tries to hold his mad scheme together.

There are obviously various problems of plot (such as: Where are the other faculty members? Why are the outside authorities both so stupid and so uncompromising? Why would the trustees have no appreciation of the school's tradition? Why would the grade-school-age cadets be issued live ammunition?, etc.). These questions do not really matter. “Taps” is basically a character study, a portrait of the personalities engaged in the showdown. And, like “Lord Of The Flies”, it observes that adolescent males can easily translate the idealistic lessons they have been taught into a rationale for acting in ways that are rigid, dogmatic, and self-justifying.

“Taps” works as an uncommonly engrossing story, primarily because the performances are so well done. All of the cadet roles are well acted, not only by seasoned actors like Hutton (who won an Academy Award for “ Ordinary People ”) but even by the very young kids who struggle with guns and realities much too large for them. By the film's end, we share their love for their school, we despair at the situation they have gotten themselves into, and we are emotionally involved in the outcome. After the film, there are some ideas to think about, involving the implications when might and right are on the same side--and when they are not.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.