As a preamble, I'd like to apologize for the time it's taken me between the viewing of this film and my publishing the corresponding post, but as you'll soon learn, this film was heavy enough to anchor a boat, and it took me a lot of time, research, and reflection to discuss it the way it deserved.
"You can't just say, 'I promise,' then forget about it. 'I promise' are the most important words you'll ever say."
The film opens on an airfield with a couple of small boys playing while their father looks on. They get into a disagreement over who gets to use their toy plane next, and Hanx, ever America's dad, steps in. He asks his older son if he'd told his younger brother he could play with it next, and the son admits to it, but says the promise didn't mean anything. Dad then reminds his firstborn of the importance of a promise. He mentions their Uncle Bobby and launches into the story of his childhood, narrating throughout.
It begins in a northern California town called Novato with the tale of a boy named Fisher, who some years earlier managed to rig a Radio Flyer wagon to "fly" (essentially falling with style) off a ledge overlooking an airfield. Fisher's successful "flight" became the stuff of local legend. Cut to a young mother named Mary driving cross country to start a new life with her two sons, Mike and Bobby, after her husband abandons them.
"You boys take care of your mom, now."
"We promised we would. And we never broke that promise."
After a lengthy road trip, Mary and the boys settle in Novato where Mary meets a man who seems to be everything she'd dreamed of, marries him, and they settle into domestic bliss. The only problem? He turns out to be an abusive drunk who takes his anger out on the younger of the boys, Bobby, because he's too little to fight back. Bobby and older brother Mike decide they can't tell their mother for fear of ruining her hard-won newfound happiness, and instead spend their days exploring their neighborhood with Bobby's cherished Radio Flyer and immersing themselves in a realm of fantasy to escape the horror that awaits them when they return home. The old shed in the backyard becomes their impromptu hideaway.
In time, Mike and Bobby stumble upon a ledge with a view of an airfield, a place they christen "The Wishing Spot," which happens to be the selfsame spot off which Fisher took his famous flight.
"We finally got up enough nerve to climb that big hill. We called the top The Wishing Spot, because we reasoned that God would have to hear a wish made that close to heaven. And we made a lot of wishes up there, but mostly just one: for the King to stop hitting Bobby. Although he always started again after a while... at the times we made those wishes, he always stopped. So we knew, beyond a doubt, that The Wishing Spot worked. It was just a little too far away from heaven for God to hear them all. God did hear a certain wish that Bobby made a thousand times up there. And I never even knew he did."
The first sign of abuse is when their new stepfather, who insists on being called "The King," takes the boys fishing. Bobby hooks a catch but can't keep it and loses an expensive lure in the process. The King, having slugged a number of beers in some previous shots that could be firmly categorized under the label of "Painfully Obvious Foreshadowing That You'd Be an Idiot Not to Notice," loses his temper and gives Bobby a hard slap across the face. Afterward, the King is remorseful, sets Bobby up with another lure, and they continue fishing.
It doesn't take long, however, until the next incident occurs. Bobby's beatings at the hands of the King become as regular as Bingo night and almost as brutal (sorry - this sort of viewing almost requires a dark sense of humor to combat the gravitas of the subject). Mary, working dawn to dusk as a waitress to help support her family, is blissfully unaware. Bobby and Mike stage diversions to distract her from discovering the bruising on Bobby's body. A group of local bullies targets the boys, and their sole protector is their dog, Shane. He accompanies them everywhere they go and protects them from their neighborhood tormentors. Shane is no dummy. Shane hates the King. Shane is a good dog.
One day as the boys are basking in the sun on the roof of the shed, the bullies ride up on their bikes and invite Mike to an impromptu football game. Bobby is skeptical, but Mike is eager for a chance to make friends, and against Bobby's protests, Mike agrees, leaving Bobby alone on the roof, crying quietly. When the game begins, it quickly becomes apparent that this is nothing more than a setup. The boys (particularly the head bully) are brutal on Mike, to the point where he winds up beaten and bloody but manages to escape. He races home, realizing how wrong he's been, and finds Bobby once again horrifically beaten at the hands of the King.
When Bobby wakes up in the hospital, an agonized Mary swears she'll never allow the King, who has since been arrested for the abuse, to hurt Bobby again. All is well until the King is released and shows up contritely on their doorstep with flowers and an apology. In a move that would absolutely infuriate the average viewer (myself included), Mary takes him back. It doesn't take long until the King is back to his old tricks, and the boys return home to find Shane lying limp on the back porch and covered in blood, seemingly dead. Much to their relief, Shane picks up his head. The boys bandage him up and resolve to finally put their plan into action, to build wings for the Radio Flyer so Bobby can escape to safety. They sell golf balls scrounged from a local course for cash to buy supplies and forage in an abandoned local shed for parts. They leave a note for their mother explaining that Bobby needs to escape and set out for the Wishing Spot. They stop at a local gas station to fuel up. The attendant gives them a knowing smile, and a glance at the patch on his uniform reveals his name: Fisher.
The King arrives at the house and finds the note and sets off after them. When Mary returns home, she also discovers the note and sets off in hot pursuit with a kindly local police officer. They arrive just in time to see Bobby soaring into the sky on his winged wagon. The King is arrested and carted off to Jail. Dad Mike reveals to his sons that Bobby traveled the world in the Radio Flyer, sending him a number of postcards throughout the years. The last line, as spoken by dad Mike is, "That's how I like to remember it."
Yikes.
Just yikes.
This may be the most heavy Hanx film I've seen to date, and as you can imagine, I've seen several. There's so much to unpack, I hardly know where to begin.
If you've never heard of or seen Radio Flyer, there's a very good reason - it was a critical and commercial flop. There were a few contributing factors to this. First off, the original screenplay was written by a young man named Mickey David Evans, a film school student and an absolute nobody as far as Hollywood bigwigs were concerned. He initially signed on as director, but given that he had zero cred in Tinseltown, the studio ultimately decided they didn't want to risk their money on a rookie, and they replaced him with cinema vet Richard Donner. This move, ironically, wound up being the death knell for the studio, as their previous $15 million budget doubled to $30 million to account for Donner's salary.
The second problem is that the film was marketed in a way that was completely wrong. Radio Flyer was billed as a kid-friendly family film, when in reality it was anything but. The subject matter is completely inappropriate for children, and the movie is in no way a lighthearted romp. The concept, at its core, is a very good one, but the inaccurate representation of what the film was did it a major disservice.
Lastly, the promotions made no mention of Tom Hanks. By that time, he was established as a big name in the film industry, and while he hadn't yet earned his first Oscar, he had tremendous star power on the heels of several big-earning blockbusters. The studio never capitalized on that, although I think there was probably a reason behind this. Given what I've learned of him, and in the absence of any information to the contrary, I believe that the decision for him to be uncredited was entirely his. This is one of the biggest mysteries of the film to me. Going into it, I figured he'd have a brief line or two that only had a small, if any, bearing on the story. This is the reason why it took so long for me to publish this post. I've done my homework, and I've never been able to figure out why he was never credited. The most common reason for this is that the film was low budget and couldn't afford the actor's salary by SAG regulations. Given how much Richard Donner was paid, I'm not sure that this was the case. I delved into whether Hanx had any issues with his father and the screenplay struck a certain chord with him. I never found any information indicating that this was the case. Perhaps he saw Mickey David Evans and recognized a version of himself, young and new to the industry, and wanted to invest in him. Maybe he just saw a beautiful story and wanted to be part of it, and he didn't want his name to be a distraction from that.
One big issue I had with this movie was with Mary, portrayed by Lorraine Bracco. I honestly think that the role was miscast. I've seen her in other things and I think she's extremely talented, but I don't buy her in this role. She's too tough. I can't buy that she wouldn't beat the ever-loving sh*t out of a man who dared to lay a hand on her child. Apparently the first choice for Mary was Rosanna Arquette, and I'm not familiar enough with her work to weigh in on how she would have done with this role, but apparently when Richard Donner took over as director, his choice was Debra Winger. I'm not sure why she didn't take on the role (information on this movie is frustratingly scarce), but the part ended up going to Bracco. I think Winger would have been perfect. She could have brought a vulnerability to Mary that would make it believable, if inexcusable, that she would overlook the King's abuse toward her youngest son for the sake of family harmony. With all due respect to Lorraine Bracco, her portrayal of Mary just pissed me off. As the mother of two very young children, I'm infuriated that she let the abuse stand after she found out about it. I honestly think the story would have been more poignant and believable if Mary had been widowed - she would have been a little more naive, her sons would have been more desperate for a father. Having been left by a man once before, it would have been more believable that she'd be wary of another.
I also have a problem with Mike. As the little sister of two brothers, I'm the youngest child. I don't know what it's like to feel the need to protect your littler siblings, but I honestly hate that Mike went along with Bobby's request to keep the secret of the King's abuse from their mother. Her happiness means everything to them, but I would think that Bobby's physical health (and life) would supercede that. After all, how happy would Mary be if Bobby died? He also deserted Bobby, who he knew was extremely vulnerable, for the sake of making a few friends among the neighborhood hoods. This kind of occurrence would of course be extremely common of average adolescent boys, but the big difference here is that Mike knew that if he left Bobby alone, he'd be vulnerable to the King's volatile anger. There's no two ways about it - Mike was selfish. Maybe he had his reasons, but I just didn't buy them.
The King, for his part, is actually a very well-developed character. It would be so easy for the movie to portray him as a consummate villain, a black-and-white persona that would be easy for audiences to hate. Instead, the film brings an unexpected humanity to the King (whose actual name was Jack McKenzkie, for the record). When he first strikes Bobby, he immediately apologizes and shows kindness toward him. It doesn't excuse his behavior, but it adds a complexity to his character. He's not the one-dimensional mustache-twisting villain. He's a human being suffering from addiction and who knows what kind of traumatic history. A deeply flawed one, but a human nonetheless. For the record, following this film, the King's portrayer, Adam Baldwin, was so repulsed by the King that he swore to never play this kind of character ever again (and to date, he hasn't). That was how deeply the role touched him.
The ultimate question mark is the ambiguity of the ending. Does Bobby, defying the laws of physics and probability, really escape into the unknown to travel the world? If so, with the King in jail, why does Bobby never return home to see his mother and brother? There are theories that Mike is telling his sons his own fantasy of events to escape the harsh truth that Bobby ultimately died of a brutal beating at the hands of the King. Richard Donner stated that the ending should be taken literally, as unrealistic as it appears. In the novel "The King of Pacoima" that Mickey David Evans published subsequent to the film's release, it's revealed that Mike presumed Bobby to have crashed to his death in the Radio Flyer's maiden flight. After he recounts the story, Mike takes his sons to the National Aerospace Museum, where the Radio Flyer is on display, and where, to their surprise, their Uncle Bobby is waiting to meet them. I personally prefer Evans' version. Perhaps it's because while I'm a hardened cynic, I'm an idealist at the core. Perhaps it's because I choose to believe in the ideals of a young aspiring writer who hasn't yet compromised his creative vision to the harsh financial reality of Hollywood. Any way you choose to see it, Bobby escaped the clutches of the King, and Mike went on to teach his boys how to fly.
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