80's Watch: Cloak & Dagger (1984)

Watched:  03/18/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Richard Franklin

Selection:  Me

We recently spent a weekend in San Antonio on the Riverwalk, a famed tourist trap where you can get a margarita the size of a fishbowl and try not to fall in Texas' second grossest body of water (Buffalo Bayou of Houston taking first), a thin ribbon of the San Antonio River that runs near the Alamo (which is directly downtown SA), and is now flanked by innumerable restaurants and bars.  The running joke when someone asks you where to eat on the Riverwalk is to say "oh, the Mexican place with the umbrellas" of which there are about a dozen.

On our first night out, Jamie and I discussed Cloak & Dagger (1984), and realized it had been many years since either of us had seen the movie.  As a kid, in some ways, the movie really hit home.  I was 9 when the movie came out, I played tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons, had a budding interest in espionage-type movies and my family routinely went to San Antonio for local-ish vacations - So I knew some of what I saw in the movie very well.

Cloak & Dagger is essentially a Hitchcock thriller with a child protagonist standing in for a Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant.  Kid sees something he shouldn't, kid has a macguffin, kid is pursued by nameless, mysterious forces that will do him in if he can't stay one step ahead - and he might get people killed along the way.

E.T.'s Henry Thomas plays Davey, a kid who loves his espionage table-top RPG in which he plays as agent Jack Flack.  He loves all the spy stuff, and has an imaginary pal in Jack Flack (played by Dabney Coleman in one of two roles) who is constantly goading him into playing out the role of spy in every day life.  While sent on an errand by his pal (William Forsyth!) who owns a gaming store - both RPG's and videogames (there is nothing new under the sun), Davey sees a guy get killed.  The guy hands him an Atari 5200 game cartridge of Cloak & Dagger, which is also the tabletop game Davey loves.  

No one believes Davey saw what he saw, and he's soon pursued by the killers.  Up and down the Riverwalk and around San Antonio.  

As a kid watching the movie, I remember thinking Davey seemed kind of crazy or weird.  He was too old for the make-believe of the film, and as someone who played games, I thought it was dumb to confuse reality and D&D or Zork or whatever.  And I don't think that's what he's doing, exactly.  He's just being obnoxious about *always* wanting to play the games.

As an adult watching the movie, it's... fine?  Okay?  Better than I expected it to be as an 80's re-watch I hadn't been that interested in seeing again?  It has pacing issues - the movie could easily have lopped off a few plot points that don't add much and been 20 minutes shorter, and in Davey's big emotional moment, it trades the fantasy world of video and RP games for movie reality, which is not really an improvement.

It is an interesting snapshot of the 1980s outside of Los Angeles - not exactly the neon-infused wonderland I think The Kids think we were living in, and more of the beige, tan and carpet world most of us remember.  Kids are dressed in about one of six colors.  Like E.T., the film does capture the boom in RPG's, the infiltration of video game consoles into households and the spike in divorce that the 70's introduced and the 80's carried along.  As well as the 70's and 80's brand of free-range method parenting, where we communicated by hand-written notes left on the kitchen counter and you might not see your folks all day.  Plus, you had the ability to just leave the house and go wherever.  

Yes, we were abducted from time to time.  And it clearly isn't working out great for Davey here.

As mentioned, Dabney Coleman, who was weirdly popular in this era for a dude who seemed like everyone's uncle, plays both the imaginary Jack Flack and Davey's actual father.  

To it's credit, the movie tries to explain to Davey - and therefore the younger audience - that heroism can just be paying the bills and keeping a roof over your kid's head.  But it's also clear neither Davey nor the audience will hear this - that's for mom and dad who took their kid to see the movie.  The movie is really about how kids are dumb a lot, so adults won't listen to them, even when fifth columnists are trying to murder them.  Maybe especially when that happens.

The movie swings wildly between Davey irresponsibly trying to solve everything on his own and Davey realizing "this is nuts, I'm going to get killed", and it seems like it can't quite commit - and that's okay.  I assume a kid in a life-or-death situation is going through a lot, but it also undermines whatever message the movie is trying to make, kind of leaving it without one.  Is Davey growing up, or is he just realizing murder is bad?  Especially if you have to do it yourself?  Or if you get hapless friends killed in the process?  Is that bad?

Rather than run and look for cops who would help Davey as he is pursued in the 3rd act (we also know there are hotels and bars that would have been open, but whatevs) he instead lures one gunman into the path of another gunman, and then shoots the second gunman - killing him.  Which - this is a PG movie.  Davey is shaken, but in the next moment mourns his imaginary friend who tells him "gee, this happens every time.  It's all part of growing up."  By which I guess Jack was actually real, and lures kid after kid into murder, at which point he abandons them?

And last I checked kill-or-be-killed is *not* part of growing up for most suburban kids.  Or did I miss something?   But it IS the fantasy swapping of "we're not playing a game" to the 1980's movie fantasy of "murder of commies is not that big of a deal."  It's a strange swap and the movie really doesn't spend that much time thinking about it.

In addition to the kid killing someone as "part of growing up" he also hides in the trunk of a car with the corpse of his pal from the gaming store for, like, a while (also - this movie says it's in San Antonio in summer, so you really, really did not want to keep a corpse in your trunk for more than like 30 minutes, tops, killers).  This was the part of the movie where I just lol'd.  Who puts that in a kid's movie?

Anyway - the movie also has the longest possible 40 minutes from the hour mark to ending.  It just keeps happening.  But we do see a young, cherubic and uncredited Louie Anderson tell Henry Thomas to buzz off in one scene.  

I know we need the big explosion at the ending, but a *lot* happens in one hour.  Too much, maybe.  The bomb just seems like a hat on a hat.  Arresting the old people was an option, too.  And would have generated more hero points in my book.

Look, I know I'm wading into some dangerous waters here.  We all want to still love movies we loved when we were 8.  This one is better than I remember, and I was surprised it wasn't an absolute mess.   But it's still pretty messy.  At best, I think it serves pretty well as "my very first political thriller" and at worst, I think it says some weird things about throwing away childish things.  All I know is that it's great news that Dabney Coleman had already scheduled a therapist appointment for Davey for the following day, because they are going to need it.

The oddest bit of this movie is that it pushes the notion of a Cloak & Dagger videogame super hard.  It's the key to the whole movie, and Atari managed to mess up their business model so hard in 1984 that they weren't able to release the very game we saw on screen approximately 50 times.  I mean, I didn't *assume* we'd have product tie ins back then, but now it just seems insane that whomever had the rights to Atari by Fall of 1984 didn't put this game out.