A Few Good Men (1992)
You Want a Review? You Can’t Handle a Review!
Ok, maybe you can. You are a pretty tough bunch…and there are more than a few former and current Marines sprinkled into the BMB family.
Serving in and with the military for nearly my entire adult life, I’ve heard my share of lines from A Few Good Men…but never actually saw the movie until now.
So what are the impressions of a new recruit?
You can’t deny that A Few Good Men is a classic. Plenty of people love this movie. And with the talent behind it, it’s easy to see why.
Let’s lay that out: It was written by Aaron Sorkin of West Wing fame, who is no slouch at words. Rob Reiner was behind the camera. The first squad is a Who’s Who of 90s stars: Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon, Keifer Sutherland, Kevin Pollak, and a platoon of backup talent, including J.A. Preston, Wolfgang Bodison, James Marshall, and in solid but “don’t blink or you’ll miss him” moment, Cuba Gooding Jr.
But is it good?
The story, for those who have not seen it, begins with a pair of Marines (Bodison and Marshall) assaulting a fellow Marine in his room. Things go sideways, one Marine dies, and the other two are arrested. The rest of the movie involves Cruise, Moore, and Pollak trying to figure out if the two who did the deed were acting on their own or had been ordered to commit the crime. Scenes bounce from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to a courtroom in Washington D.C., with occasional stops at Tom Cruise’s favorite news stand, Moore’s favorite seafood place, a seedy hotel, and a baseball field.
Things I liked: Nicholson was solid and disturbingly sympathetic: so much so that they seemed to force things onto his character to make him seem less likable. I won’t get into too much, but his decisions early in the film would almost certainly have been viewed as those of a strong, principled leader in the real world. I would have been happy to serve under Colonel Jessep (Nicholson). Another actor who nailed it was Kevin Bacon (in zero degrees of separation from himself), who plays Marine Captain Jack Ross. Bacon looks every bit the Marine and manages to come off as not only cool and professional, but eminently likable.
I also like the theme Sorkin introduces in the first two minutes, ‘though it remains largely undeveloped.
As the movie opens we see what appears to be the ultimate breakdown of military discipline, with Marines killing one of their own. The next scene shows a precision drill team working in perfect unison: a living example of teamwork and cooperation. Sorkin seems to be teeing up the tension inherent in the profession of arms. It is an violent line of work. But it only works if everyone follows a strict code and maintain iron discipline. His question seems to be how do you reconcile one with the other.
Cool idea, but one he did not do as much with as he could or should have. Speaking of things I didn’t like:
Tom Cruise hasn’t played a character other than Tom Cruse in 35 years. He was only slightly more tolerable than Demi Moore, who was pretty bad.
In general I thought the depiction of military culture was fairly good. So much of this film has made its way into that culture though that I was sometimes left wondering if life had come to imitate art or if Sorokin just did a really good job of tapping into the voice of the military of the time
The over the top sexism was hard to watch though. While it was before some readers were born, I was in uniform in 1992 and even have a hazy memory or two of it. Sexual harassment was a huge problem. It still is. But I cannot in my wildest dreams imagine a senior officer speaking the way Nicholson did with Moore (you know the scene, if you’ve seen the film); or for that matter, Cruise saying “I’m sexually aroused” when Moore, a much more senior officer, dresses him down. My sense is that it was added to Nicholson to make him seem more grotesque and to Cruise to make his seem charming. It came off as forced.
Also forced was the suggestion of romantic tension between Moore and Cruise and the movie pressing to make Cruise’s performance some sort of “daddy issue.” It was unnecessary and unwelcome.
Finally, and I don’t necessarily think this is good or bad, the film seemed to struggle with what it actually thought about the Marines. Early on Moore somberly and seriously describes the Marines as “fanatics,” and at times they are shown as loud automatons. At the same time, Bacon and J.A. Preston (as a Marine Colonel presiding over the case) are engaging, serious, and likable professionals. They are a lot more like the Marines I’ve served with than Jessep (even if nearly all can recite his soliloquy by heart).
So good or bad? Does it really matter with a classic? Like an old Army or Marine dress uniform, wedding dress, or high school jacket, people will pull this out of the closet every few years and try to squeeze into it. It doesn’t matter if it still fits - or ever did. It gives them a minute to remember an earlier time in their life and relive a few (hopefully) happy memories. What more do you need from a movie?
A Few Good Men is available HERE on Amazon Prime.
Three out of Five Code Reds.
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