Cloak & Dagger is a 1984 film directed by Richard Franklin starring Henry Thomas and Dabney Coleman. It is a remake of the 1949 film The Window.
Plot
Thomas plays Davey Osborne, an 11-year-old who lives in San Antonio with his father Hal Osborne, played by Coleman. His mother has recently died, leaving just him and his father, Hal Osborne—a military air traffic controller who has problems relating to his child. Davey is a lonely child and is still grieving over his mother, so he immerses himself in the fantasy world of Cloak & Dagger, a game which exists in both role playing and video forms. Davey has one friend, Kim, (Christina Nigra) a girl who lives nearby with her single mother. Davey is interested in the world of espionage and his hero is the character Jack Flack from the game Cloak & Dagger. He wants to live an action-packed life like Jack Flack and he carries around a water pistol as his "gun" and a softball as his "grenade". Davey spends much of his free time playing Cloak & Dagger and spinning elaborate fantasies involving Jack Flack, who in Davey's mind takes the form of a more dashing version of his father (the role of Flack is also played by Coleman).
One day Davey's friend Morris (William Forsythe), who owns a video game shop in the local mall, sends Davey and Kim on an errand, where Davey witnesses a murder. Right before the victim dies, he gives Davey a Cloak & Dagger video-game cartridge and says that the cartridge contains important military secrets pertaining to a stealth bomber that closely resembles the SR-71 Blackbird. Davey seeks help from the authorities but they simply believe him to be engaging in fantasy play.
Murderous spies chase Davey relentlessly as he flees across the city. The action moves from Davey's house, to a series of canal boats, to the Alamo. Along the way Davey manages to continually evade his pursuers with the aid and advice of the imaginary Jack Flack. However, along the way Davey's relationship with Flack becomes more strained as his own sense of morality and concern for his friend Kim collide with Flack's harsh methods and cavalier attitude. This comes to a head when Davey is cornered by a spy along a canal.
During the flight along the canal, Jack Flack convinces Davey to set the 2 spies chasing him into a crossfire, causing one to kill the other. He then convinves Davey to pick up the gun of the dead spy. When he is then cornered, Jack Flack causes a distraction, causing Davey to look off to the side. Thinking that somebody else has arrived, the spy fires at a blank wall. Davey in anger fires at the spy, believing that Jack Flack has really been shot.
Davey then realizes that Jack Flack tricked him into shooting the spy, and is filled with rage and guilt. He throws away the pistol, then takes out the miniature of Jack Flack, breaking it and stating that he "does not want to play anymore". Jack Flack realizes that Davey has finally grown up, and starts to bleed. He tells Davey that his father behaved the same way at his age, growing tired of playing "Cowboys and Indians". He tells Davey that he was his favorite play partner, then Jack fades away into nothing.
In a scene at the Alamo, Davey is befriended by a kindly elderly couple. Seemingly the only adults to believe him, or at least the only ones who are willing to humor his adventures, the couple turn out to be enforcers working for the spies. Davey manages to escape their clutches, but without the game cartridge, and he chases the couple to the airport where they are attempting to flee the country. At the airport, Davey forces the couple's hand by pretending that they are his parents, instead of his 'grand'parents, and that they are abandoning him. When security attempts to intervene, the couple kidnaps Davey at gunpoint and commandeers a plane, unaware that Davey has brought with him a bomb which the spies had meant to use to kill him. Unwilling to listen to Davey about the bomb, the couple requests a pilot. Meanwhile, Hal has arrived at the airport with Kim's mother, and after hearing about the hostage situation, he volunteers to be the pilot. As he is walking out to the plane, Davey initially mistakes him for Jack Flack. As the plane starts moving down the runway, father and son manage to fool the two kidnappers long enough for Davey to escape, but before Hal can get out of the plane, the bomb explodes. Davey watches the explosion in horror, thinking his father is lost, but he sees a figure marching from the flames and is overjoyed to see that it is his dad, who he once again mistakes at first for Jack. The film ends with the two reunited and apparently reconciled.
Video game tie-in
Critical to the movie's plot is an Atari video game called Cloak & Dagger. The game was under development using the title Agent X when the movie producers and Atari learned of each others' projects and decided to cooperate. This collaboration was part of a larger phenomenon at the time of movies featuring video games as critical plot elements (as with Tron and The Last Starfighter) and of video game tie-ins to the same movies (as with the Tron games for the Intellivision and other platforms).
Filming locations
Filming for this movie took place on location in San Antonio. Scenes of the neighborhood the Osbornes lived in were filmed in the inner-loop suburb of Alamo Heights. The mall scenes took place at the former Wonderland Mall, now known as Crossroads Mall and located in Balcones Heights. The scenes that took place on the Riverwalk were filmed on location. The scenes depicting the exterior of the Alamo were filmed on location, however the interior had to be recreated because they were not allowed to film inside the Alamo.
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