Birdy (Matthew Modine) is a young boy obsessed with birds who befriends with Al (Nicolas Cage) who seems equally interested and frustrated with Birdy’s obsession. The film follows up them in two timelines, reminiscencing their past while following them later, broken mentally and physically by the Vietnam war, shut inside a mental institute.

Modine and Cage give good performances here, and both manage to capture their uncommon friendship convincingly. But similarly to Al, I also soon wore tired of Birdy’s single-minded obsession with the birds. As he doesn’t seem to be interested in nothing but the aviary world. it seems like there’s nothing else to the character, leaving him hard to grasp and paper thin.

The unchronological pacing of the movie works well at times, but the flashbacks fail to really reveal anything fundamental of how the characters really ended up where they are now, and thus Birdy – including its ending – leaves much too many open questions to be really a satisfying interpersonal drama.

80s-o-meter: 60%

Total: 64%