Cloak & Dagger is a family spy/action thriller kind of thing starring Henry Thomas, Dabney Coleman, Michael Murphy, Bill Forsythe, Christina Nigra, John McIntire, and Jeanette Nolan.
Davey (Thomas) is a young lad coping with the death of his mother and retreating into espionage and war games. His favorite is Cloak & Dagger, which is apparently somewhere between a board game and an RPG (it uses d12s, but also maps and minis), and must be a franchise because there's also a video game for a cartridge console. Davey's best friend is Kim (Nigra), who puts up with his shit as best she can, but his real confidante is his imaginary friend and hero of Cloak & Dagger, Jack Flack (Coleman).
While running an errand for his neckbeard buddy Morris (Forsythe), Davey witnesses two of the most incompetent goons in cinema history (Eloy Casados and Tim Rossovich) murder...I dunno, an FBI agent posing as a video game company employee? (I don't know who plays him). Anyway, he gives Davey a cartridge and tells him a number, Davey runs and tries to get help, but for all that these goons are pretty dumb, they can clean up blood like nobody's business because there's no evidence of the crime.
From there, the bad guys, led by Rice (Murphy), chase Davey hither and yon while he tries to convince his father (also Coleman) of what's happening and protect himself and Kim. Turns out the cartridge contains plans for a new bomber and you can access them by getting to a particular high score in the game, but whatever, that's all MacGuffin stuff. The important arc is Davey coming to realize that his dad is the real hero, I guess.
I dunno. It's actually kind of muddled. Jack Flack is an imaginary friend, but clearly Davey's projection of his father as an action hero/spy, except Jack is cold and ruthless and Davey doesn't see that as a good thing. When Jack insults his father, Davey tells him to shut up, so perhaps Jack is Davey's projected feelings about his father? It's also possible that I'm putting far more thought into this than the filmmakers did.
Anyway, Davey eventually triumphs by shooting a dude (the 80s were wild), rejects Jack, and (literally) embraces his father. It's a heartwarming ending only kind of marred by the fact that Davey not only killed a man but spent an hour in the trunk of a car with the corpse of his friend Morris, and nearly got his best friend blown up. Again, the 80s were wild.
I watched this movie a lot when I was a kid; it was a staple video rental and my dad and I liked watching it together. The nostalgia is there and I think the movie holds up as an entertaining watch, though seeing it through younger eyes definitely highlights the darker aspects. But like, Gen X. Sometimes the child protagonist has to shoot someone. The FBI have guns, not walkie talkies. Han shot first. That's the way things are, and frankly I much prefer that to the sanded edges and fart jokes of kid movies in the last couple of decades.
My Grade: B
Rewatch Value: High
Next up: Daddy's Home
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