"Birdy" is a 1984 film centered on the friendship between Birdy, (Matthew Modine) a shy, awkward introvert obsessed with birds and street-wise Al Columbato (Nicolas Cage). The movie begins in the 1960s at a VA hospital where Birdy is being treated for a nervous breakdown during his service in the Vietnam War. Birdy will not communicate with the doctors and he acts just like a bird. Al, having also served in Vietnam, visits Birdy to try and get him to remember how to be human and snap out of his psychosis before he is sent to a mental institution. The story of their friendship is told in flashback as Al revisits their past and deals with his own trauma from the war.