Cloak & Dagger (1984 film)

Cloak & Dagger is a 1984 American spy adventure film directed by Richard Franklin, and starring Henry Thomas, Dabney Coleman and Michael Murphy. It was written by Tom Holland and based on a Cornell Woolrich short story "The Boy Cried Murder", which was initially filmed as The Window.[3] It was originally released in a double feature with The Last Starfighter on July 13, 1984, and was released separately on August 10, 1984. The film grossed $9.7 million in the United States. Thomas was nominated for the Young Artist Award for Best Actor.[4]

Cloak & Dagger
Theatrical release poster
Directed byRichard Franklin
Produced byAllan Carr
Screenplay byTom Holland
Story by
Based on"The Boy Cried Murder"
by Cornell Woolrich
Starring
Music byBrian May
CinematographyVictor J. Kemper
Edited byAndrew London
Production
company
Distributed byUniversal Pictures[1]
Release date
Running time
101 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Box office$9.7 million (US)[2]

Plot

Davey Osborne is an 11-year-old boy living in San Antonio, Texas. His father, Hal, is a military air traffic controller, who has problems relating to his son. Davey imagines the fantasy world of Cloak & Dagger, an espionage role-playing video game existing between fiction and reality. Davey befriends Kim, a girl living nearby. Davey recruits Jack Flack, the game's main character. He wants to live an action-packed life like Jack, and he carries around a water pistol as his "gun" and a softball as his "grenade". Davey spends much time playing the game and spending time with Jack as an imaginary friend.

One day, Davey's friend, Morris, who owns a game shop, sends Davey and Kim on an errand, where Davey witnesses a murder. Before the victim dies, he gives Davey a Cloak & Dagger video-game cartridge which contains important military secrets that must be given to the FBI. Davey seeks help from the authorities but they do not believe him.

Spies, led by Dr. Rice, chase Davey across the city. Along the way, Jack helps Davey evade the pursuers. However, Davey's sense of morality and concern for his friend Kim collide with Jack's harsh methods. Davey is cornered by the spies along the River Walk. During the fight, Jack urges Davey to lure two of the spies into the "Crossfire Gambit", causing one to kill the other. Jack convinces Davey to pick up the gun of a dead spy, but rather than shoot Rice, Davey panics and runs away down a dead-end path. Rice arrives and corners Davey, taunting him. When Davey proves unwilling to shoot first, Jack tries to get Rice's attention. Standing in front of a blank wall (and holding his Agent-X bulletproof beret in front of him for protection), Jack dares Rice to shoot him. Davey looks to Jack, warning him not to do anything, and Rice instinctively turns and fires at the wall, thinking "Jack" is a hidden ally. An enraged Davey fires his pistol, killing Rice.

Realizing that Jack had tricked him into shooting the spy, Davey discards the pistol, pulls the miniature of Jack out of his pocket and breaks the miniature on the concrete. Blood begins to pour from the bullet holes that now riddle Jack's body, and he collapses. While expressing regret about the rule, "...leaving when they stop believing," Jack confesses Davey was always his favorite playmate. Distracting Davey by asking for a smoke, Jack fades away into nothing. When Davey calls to Jack, saying he can't do it alone, Jack's voice reassures him that he always could, and tells him to save Kim.

Earlier, Davey had been befriended by an elderly couple but they turn out to be enforcers allied with the spies. Davey manages to escape them, but without the game cartridge, and he chases the couple to the airport where they are attempting to flee the country. At the airport, Davey pretends that they are his parents and that they are abandoning him. When security intervenes, Davey tells the guard the proof is the game cartridge he knows they have. Cornered, the couple kidnap Davey and commandeer a plane, unaware that Davey has brought the bomb which the spies had planned to use to kill Kim. The spies request a pilot, and Hal, who has arrived at the airport with Kim's mother, volunteers to be the pilot. As the plane moves to the runway, Davey tries to summon Jack for help; his father hears him and identifies himself as "Jack Flack" and calls Davey to the cockpit. When the female enforcer shows up to bring him, she discovers the bomb and panics, calling for her husband. Hal gets Davey out of the plane through the cockpit window. Davey runs after the plane down the runway, calling for his father, until the plane explodes, destroying the cartridge and the enforcers in the process. Then a figure appears and approaches him, looking like the silhouette of Jack Flack before revealing that he is his father. As the two embrace Davey asks how he was able to escape, and Hal replies, "Jack Flack always escapes."

Cast

Production

"It's pretty exciting," said Thomas of the film. "It's got some violence in it. I get to fire a gun."[5]

Principal photography went from August 8 to October 7, 1983. Filming took place in San Antonio, Texas, chosen because it was Thomas' hometown. The scenes depicting the exterior of the Alamo were filmed on location; however, the interior had to be recreated because they were not allowed to film inside the Alamo.[1]

In a 2012 interview, Coleman recalled:

I thought it was a great idea. I didn’t get along with the director [Richard Franklin]. He's since passed on, but he was... Well, I won't say that. But it was great working with that little kid. Henry Thomas. What a great kid. And a great actor. I'll tell you, though, it's amazing how many people have come up to me and said something to me about that film, including Timothy Bottoms... So Timothy came up to my table at Dan Tana's, where I was, uh, kind of a regular... Timothy says, "You don't know me from veal parmesan, but I just want to thank you for playing Jack Flack. You don't know what that movie means to my son and me." That happens to me two or three times a year. It's always either a father saying, "I saw that movie with my son," or a son saying, "I saw it with my dad." But then they say, "Seeing that movie was very important in my life." And that's always very nice to hear.[6]

Video game tie-in

Critical to the movie's plot is an Atari video game called Cloak & Dagger made for the Atari 5200 (the arcade version appears in the movie; the Atari 5200 version was started but never completed). The game was under development using the title Agent X when the movie producers and Atari learned of each other's projects and decided to cooperate. This collaboration was part of a larger phenomenon at the time of films featuring video games as critical plot elements (as with Tron and The Last Starfighter) and of video game tie-ins to the same films (as with the Tron games for the Intellivision and other platforms).[7]

Reception

The film was released during the Los Angeles Olympics. Universal felt that the target audience of younger children would not be as interested in Olympics and the film would have less competition.[8] The film grossed $9.7 million in the United States, $2.8 million of which came from its opening weekend.[2] Cloak & Dagger received a 64% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 11 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10.[9] On her review, Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised Franklin's direction, as well as the performances of Thomas and Coleman.[10]Metacritic gave the film a score of 64 based on 7 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[11]


Other adaptations

The Woolrich's story has been adapted three more times:[12][13]

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References
  1. "Cloak & Dagger (1984)". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. Retrieved December 6, 2017.
  2. "Cloak and Dagger". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved December 6, 2017.
  3. Vander Kaay, Chris; Fernandez-Vander Kaay, Kathleen (2014). The Anatomy of Fear: Conversations with Cult Horror and Science-Fiction Filmmakers. NorLightsPress. p. 22. ISBN 978-1935254973.
  4. "6th Annual Awards". 6 May 2016. Archived from the original on 6 May 2016. Retrieved 20 July 2018.
  5. Maslin, Janet (1984-03-23). "At the Movies". The New York Times.
  6. Harris, Will (2012-10-23). "Dabney Coleman on Boardwalk Empire and why WarGames doesn't make sense". The A.V. Club. Retrieved 2019-09-27.
  7. Cloak and Dagger at US Gamer
  8. Pollock, Dale (August 4, 1984). "THEATERS TAKE 2ND TO OLYMPICS: THEATERS: OLYMPICS LEAD". Los Angeles Times.
  9. "Cloak and Dagger (1984)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved April 10, 2018.
  10. Maslin, Janet (August 10, 1984). "THE SCREEN: 'DAGGER', SPY GAMES". The New York Times. Retrieved January 27, 2013.
  11. "Cloak & Dagger Reviews". Metacritic.
  12. Mayer, Geoff (September 13, 2012). Historical Dictionary of Crime Films. Scarecrow Press. p. 405. ISBN 9780810879003. Retrieved 26 September 2017.
  13. DeGiglio-Bellemare, Mario; Ellbé, Charlie; Woofter, Kristopher (December 11, 2014). Recovering 1940s Horror Cinema: Traces of a Lost Decade. Lexington Books. p. 123. ISBN 9781498503808. Retrieved 28 September 2017.
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