Obsessed with the videogame Cloak & Dagger, young boy Davey Osborne (Henry Thomas) spends his non-game time roleplaying spy capers with his imaginary friend, the game’s lead hero Jack Flack (Dabney Coleman).
When he inadvertently stumbles onto a real covert mission, Davey finds himself on the run from real bad guys with real guns…
I have only seen this movie once before, on TV as a child.
It has been decades but I can still remember so many images from it: the old woman’s missing fingers; Dabney Coleman as the imaginary friend; the finale on the plane.
A remake of the 1949 suspense thriller The Window, Cloak & Dagger is kind of a miracle.
Directed by Richard Franklin (Roadgames) and written by Todd Holland (Fright Night), walks the line between a kid’s adventure with a suspense thriller.
The key is that the film invests in making sure the thriller elements have stakes.
Franklin, a devotee of Alfred Hitchcock, had already proven himself a sure hand with suspense in films like Patrick, Roadgames and his previous collaboration with Holland, Psycho II.
Here, he knows exactly how to deploy the Hitchcock playbook to create a tense man-on-the-run thriller. The only difference is that instead of Cary Grant or Robert Doant, it is a kid.
The film’s architecture of suspense is so solid and familiar, you could almost swap out Henry Thomas for an adult actor, and it would still work.
While it is not that violent, it never feels like the villains are soft-pedalled - henchmen matter-of-factotum debating whether a kid is worth asking for a bonus; villain Michael Murphy telling Thomas he is going to shoot him in the stomach and leave him to die.
The other element that builds the stakes is the portrayal of Thomas’s relationship with his dad.
In only a few scenes, Thomas and Coleman create a distinctly different dynamic to the one he has with Flack. Both characters are dealing with the loss of his mother, and Davey is clearly using his imagination as an escape.
What I appreciated about the film is that it does not go down the familiar route of making his father some kind of ultra-disciplinarian, or emotionally cut off.
Instead, it is Flack who exhibits a complete disconnect from danger.
Davey’s father is struggling to understand him, but is still present. What makes him interesting - and what enabled him to finally connect with Davey - is that he constantly trying to meet his son where he is at.
The other element I love about this movie is the way it conceives of the titular game, and Davey’s interest in it.
Jack Flack himself sums up what the movie understands about kids and how they imagine the world.
I was into spy thrillers as a kid, and I remember checking out books from the library on weapons and espionage.
Flack and the kid talk to each other with a vague approximation of spy lingo. The way Davey moves and talks feels like a kid who has watched a lot of movies like this.
Rather elegantly, the film manages to juggle the spy thriller plot with the lead character's arc of gradually moving away from his imaginary friend.
A gem.
If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour.
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