zombiefan89
Blood, violence, a huge body count, and yet still only PG...!? Not to mention that kid had the most realistic toy gun I've ever seen! They didn't do orange tips back then. I remembered seeing this movie as a kid, that iconic opening scene where Jack fights off three guys and a beautiful woman gets shot in the breast. Anyway, after witnessing a murder, a mortally wounded guy in a white lab-coat gives him a Cloak & Dagger cartridge, with the whole "it's too late for me, take it and run!" bit we've seen a thousand times. What interests me is how powerful Jack is for an imaginary friend, who shares the same actor as the boy's father. Which implies the boy secretly wants his father to play with him instead of Jack. Oh and by powerful, I mean god-like! Jack starts hitting real people in the face! He even gets shot several times, blood everywhere, but he comes back swinging!
bgm1975
I fondly remember this movie and watch it to this day. Its amazing how, as kids, we saw this movie in the 80s where a child is being chased, shot at, almost stabbed, threaten to have his knee caps blown off and shot in the gut, kill 3 guys (2 not by him but caused by him)and be held hostage...and it was a family film rated PG! Still this movie didn't dumb down the dangers of real violence, international terrorism, espionage, and dangerous people. A movie made like this today would make the kid a genius and the bad guys clumsy and stupid. I do miss serious films like this for kids. They never dumbed it down and took the audience seriously. Movies like Poltergeist, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Dark Crystal (Which scared me to death), The Neverending Story, and more always played to the intelligence of the audience. Now all we have is fart jokes and one-note slapstick. When my kids get old enough I do want them to watch these 80s film and learned to appreciate good film-making, something lacking in the 21st century, and by box-office results, the audience notices it too.
Stark-MySideYourSide
Cloak and Dagger was one of my favorite films as a child and continues to hold up well as time passes by. A reminder, in many ways, how much Dabney Coleman's performances marked the years 1980-1985. Henry Thomas remains in many ways one of a scant few child actors to make their mark in multiple films (something Disney has struggled with in recent years, even with the attempts to market mediocre talents like Hilary Duff and Lindsey Lohan). And in an era where role playing games of any nature were looked down on, this portrayed them in a heroic light-"Jack Flack always escapes".There are a number of skilled character actors who make up the supporting cast for this film, and the script continues to hold up to today's standards. In many ways, this film should act as a template for movie studios looking to craft a story for young audiences, as opposed to "Shark Boy and Lava Girl".
Aaron1375
This movie seems like it should be older to me, maybe 83 mainly because I can't believe it came out the same year as Ghostbusters and Gremlins and a host of other movies I saw that year. This movie is kind of a more realistic version of Spy Kids even though this one is a bit hard to believe in its own right. Still though it has good pacing and a rather good plot. The story revolves around a boy who has an imaginary friend called Jack Flack a character from this spy game the kid loves (kind of a dungeons and dragons game). Not coincidentally, this character also resembles his dad (both his dad and Jack Flack are played by Dabney Coleman). The kid gets his hands on a video game that has some sort of secret as this killers are on his tail to get the game back and they do kill people along the way. Kind of violent considering this one is geared toward to kids. This movie is also set in beautiful San Antonio, Texas a city I have visited in the past. So many of the sites within the movie I had actually been too.
AD
