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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
1969- A Time Capsule, April 29, 2001
Robert Downey Jr., Kiefer Sutherland, Bruce Dern, Winona Ryder, Mariette Hartley star in a movie about the Music, The Anger(Remember Riots & Revolution in the streets), and The Innocence of a generation who believed they could change the world!At the end of the 1960s, Scott and Ralph, two college kids from a stuffy, upper-middle class suburban town, decide to spend the summer on the road, living out of their van and experiencing all the freedom the counterculture(Hippie)has to offer. Family conflicts and the harsh realities of the war in Vietnam, however, interfere with their idyll. Scott's older brother, who Scott self-rightously criticized for going to war, is reported missing in action and then comes home in a casket. Then Ralph is arrested for stealing his file from the draft board to avoid duty. Before their "last summer of innocence" is over, Scott and Ralph learn that there's more to being radicals than just drop out and tuning in.If you were there or wish you had been 1969 is the movie for you!96 minutes, Rated R
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Surprisingly good and timely anti-war "period piece", March 5, 2005
1969 is very special to me. I graduated from high school, went to Woodstock, and attended every anti-war event I could find. I would be inclined to watch any movie about this period, but when this one came on "Tivo" as a suggestion, I was skeptical. The Tivo guide gave it two stars and suggested that it was about nothing but a couple of guys doing dope on the road.
It is actually a pretty powerful anti-war movie, with fine acting from Winona Ryder, Keifer Sutherland, and Robert Downey, Jr., who were big stars in the '80s and I am surprised this was not more of a box office hit for their presence in the cast.
The scenes are realistic, portraying the happy-go-lucky years
of hitchiking, campus protests, "sensitivity" and all that, and
the music is well-chosen for the most part. I thought that there was a gratuitous homophobic scene early on, when the boys are picked up by a not-so-creepy slightly older hippie type and go ballistic, but even that scene is saved by the gay guy yelling out to them as they run away, "I didn't know you were married!"
Scott (Sutherland) is a thoughtful individualistic boy, very typical for the time, and you get the sense that his older brother, headed for Vietnam as a Marine, is not that different, but timing is everything. Bruce Dern as the WWII veteran father is surprisingly convincing (I thought he could only play creepy types) The story is fairly predictable but well done.
Ryder is great playing "Beth" younger sister of the Downey character. And what is it with these early Downey roles? Art imitates life or is it vice-versa? We see him here flipping out on LSD, running around almost naked, etc., same thing we see later in his performance as "Julian" in "Less than Zero".
He's probably the finest of the actors in this film, but this is not his best role. I thought Sutherland did better and, what's more, looked better. He is the star of this movie.
Too bad he is wasting his talent these days on Fox's tacky "24".
Anyway, in any period piece, I am always on the lookout for realism in scenes, props, characters, hairstyles, clothes, you name it. On first viewing, I thought this film did very well on most of those counts.
Only the final scene is unrealistic. This is supposedly set in
Maryland in the early and late summer of 1969. That is too early for the kind of consensus to develop about the war that is depicted, especially in a small town where only one kid has died in Vietnam. (As I write this, the same kind of feeling about the Iraq war is only apparently developing in Vermont)
I would have liked to see these characters attending Woodstock,
as that would have fit into the story well. Also, as in the NBC television series "American Dreams", some depiction of what the older brother was seeing going on in Vietnam would have helped immensely. So this is not quite up there with such brilliant and moving Vietnam films as "Platoon" and "Born on the Fourth of July" or "Forrest Gump", but it's a fine movie and if you are anti-war and a child of the '60s, you will love it.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
When We Were Young, January 2, 2006
Dopy yet captivating, 1969 wears its heart on its sleeve. Winona Ryder has beautiful hippie outfits. Robert Downey Jr is fascinating to watch. His character just seems like him. Because he always plays drugged-out losers whose worlds are about to collapse, his movies always seem to be his autogiography, just like the old time-stars like Lana Turner or John Wayne. Yet in this film Kiefer's the real star, and he isn't bad. With his blond, blond hair he looks very much as though he might actually have been the son of Mariette Hartley.
The anti war stuff was a little cimplified but good. Winona makes a startling speech at her high school graduation, asking the crowd why we have to go fight a war that no one in the US actually understands. Watching it today, we realize we should be asking ourselves these questions all over again. I wonder if the movie might have been more of a success today than in 1988. Ryder made this film right between BEETLEJUICE and HEATHERS, when she was still a giant star, and yet it barely saw release.
Among the elders, Bruce Dern, Mariette Hartley and Joanna Cassidy are all excellent. Joanna Cassidy isn't as lean and mean as she is on SIX FEET UNDER, she has more flesh on her, but she looks marvelous, like Claudia Cardinale playing a hippie.
There's a scene where Sutherland's VW van, decked up in hippie colors, passes a convoy of soldier boys on a lonely highway, and Ryder leans out the window and makes the peace sign at them with a beatific smile. At first the soldiers respond violently and obscenely and then, as more and more trucks are passed, the mood of the soldiers seems to shift and a few give the peace sign back. Then more and more of them. All the while on the soundtrack "Wooden Ships" is playing (the Jefferson Airplane version). Some of the scenes were touching, others a little goofy.
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