25. Birdy
The Movie: An oddity. The Vietnam War is a big part of the plot, but it's not really a war movie. Much of the movie is set in an asylum, but it's not really an asylum movie. Rather, this is a teenage buddy movie, though not a comedic one. It's about a cool kid (with his own problems) who makes friends with an outsider weirdo. That's a common enough narrative trope in movies -- think of Rebel without a Cause or The Mudge Boy (in which birds are also important to the plot). But the movie doesn't begin with these two friends in high school. Rather it begins, with the two reuniting in an asylum after returning from Vietnam, where both have suffered some trauma. The story of their earlier friendship then unfolds in flashbacks. But what really separates this movie is the characteristic that defines the weirdo (played by Matthew Modine) - an interest in birds that slowly grows into obsession and then delusion. There are so many ways this movie could have gone off the rails with such a character. And to be fair, in the final five minutes it does kind of go off the rails. But until that point, Birdy offers a sensitive portrait of the title character as a young man who is simply attuned to the world differently than most people.
Cage: He is the relatively cool friend of Birdy. This is a much different Cage than the one we know from the past decade. This was his sixth movie role, and he was only 20 years old. In some ways, his character is very similar to the one he played that same year in Racing with the Moon (an underrated movie that co-starred a young Sean Penn). He brings the same cool swagger to this role that he brought to that one. The man is a natural performer, after all. What's different is that in the non-flashback scenes in Birdy, Cage's face is swathed in bandages as his character heals from wounds suffered in Vietnam. And given that Modine's character in the asylum is near catatonic, Cage has to carry this entire half of the movie by himself while using only half his face. It's one of his best performances.
Standout Cage Moment: While this is a very good movie, there are some scenes in the asylum when the script becomes leaden. In those scenes, Cage has to deliver what might be called obvious emotions -- the unadorned, overwhelming emotional outbursts that we expect to emerge from moments of great sadness. These scenes are difficult even with a good script. They're near impossible when the script is serving up wooden lines. And Cage nails them all.
Also, check out the two images below. It certainly felt like the Modine/Cage pose was copied from the famous Arlen/Rogers scene in Wings.
And this challenge has been running for over 5 years 
