Cloak & Dagger
1984’s “Cloak & Dagger” isn’t a movie that’s going to land on any serious critic’s list of the best film ever made, but I would imagine that for a generation who grew up in the ’80s, it’s a film that’s looked on fondly. Even though it was inspired by a 1940s thriller, “The Window,” this film is an exciting family adventure about a kid whose fantasy life of spies and espionage, which is tied into his gaming, becomes real when he witnesses a murder. As the man is dying, he hands the kid (Davey, played by Henry Thomas, coming off of “E.T.”) a video game cartridge of “Cloak & Dagger,” his favorite game, which contains secret military plans. Now, Davey is being chased by the killers, and the only people who believe him are his best friend, Kim (Christina Nigra), and Jack Flack (Dabney Coleman), his imaginary spy friend, who helps him along the way.
“Cloak & Dagger” is part of a series of family films from the 1980s that brought video and gaming culture to the cinema. It was after “TRON” and “Wargames,” but came out alongside another Universal adventure, “The Last Starfighter,” as part of a double feature. More important than that, however, it also brought to screen the type of playing we do as children, where we make like spies or adventurers or anything we wanted, and give ourselves missions to accomplish. In the context of modern pop culture, though, “Cloak & Dagger” plays like a precursor to fan films, which allowed a generation to put our fantasies on film, and share them with the world. Of course, what Davey is going through is very real, especially when Kim gets kidnapped, and their friend Morris is murdered after discovering the truth.
There’s another layer of the story (by Tom Holland, who wrote the story with Cornell Woolrich) that is hinted at. Coleman has a duel role in the film as Davey’s father, who is a military air traffic controller who also was an Air Force pilot in his younger days. Davey’s mother is recently deceased, and his father is worried about him, and can’t connect with him. That’s where Jack Flack comes in, as he fills the need to be listened to that Davey can’t seem to get from his father. When things get tense, and a car crash cuts off a phone call with Davey, that’s when his father, Hal, springs into action, and plays a crucial role in saving the day by being the father Davey not only wants, but also need. Coleman is terrific in both roles, and he has great chemistry with Thomas, who is every bit as good as he was in “E.T.,” in which he also played a lonely kid who finds himself in an extraordinary set of circumstances with a friend no one else believes exists.
Even now, long after I left youth, it’s easy to recognize something in myself in Davey, who grows up during the course of this film. In the second half of the film, we see Davey have to confront some real, adult emotions as he finds that the game isn’t fun anymore when he’s forced to kill one of the bad guys in real life. That leads to one of the best scenes in the film, where Jack Flack finds that he isn’t needed anymore to be a playmate to Davey, facing the same type of abandonment we saw in the “Toy Story” films with Woody and the rest of Andy’s toys. Everybody grows up at some point, and this is Davey’s moment to do so, but even at the end, with he and his father on a new level of understanding, I get the distinct possibility that Davey will never really lose that sense of fun that brought Jack Flack into his life in the first place, and they’ll be reunited. After all, Jack Flack always escapes.
