A soaring experience unlike anything you've ever seen before.


Director Alan Parker tackles this adapation of William Wharton's novel, which retains much of the source material's texture and complexity. Matthew Modine is Birdy, who comes back from Vietnam mentally shattered and deludes himself into thinking that he is a bird, an animal that has obsessed him since childhood. Birdy is confined to a military hospital, where he spends his time sitting naked in his room, not acknowleding anyone, moving and acting like a parakeet. His best friend Al (Nicolas Cage), also a wounded Vietnam vet, visits Birdy every day, determined to bring him back to reality. Birdy is occasionally disjointed but enriched by strong performances from Modine and Cage and a number of hard-to-forget moments.


The film received the Grand Prize of the Jury at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival.[1] Roger Ebert gave the film four stars (out of four),[2] and at Rotten Tomatoes currently (2011) it has a rating of 88% based on 25 reviews. Halliwell's Film Guide claimed the film "somewhat lacks plot advancement" and is "too self-indulgent even to earn marks for trying."[3]

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