A Few Good Men (Special Edition)

A Few Good Men (Special Edition)
by Rob Reiner

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Movie Reviews of A Few Good Men (Special Edition)

Movie Review: "A FEW GOOD MEN" WAS REINER/SORKIN'S SUBTLE MESSAGE OF THEIR
Summary: 5 Stars

Unlike other obviously partisan Hollywood films from the likes of Robert Redford and Oliver Stone, "A Few Good Men" (1992) delivered a subtler message from liberals Rob Reiner (director) and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin ("The West Wing"). It was also an example of how liberals sometimes shoot themselves in the foot in their attempts to demonstrate the goodness of their point and the faults of their political opposites.
This has happened on more than one occasion. In 1964, radical screenwriter Terry Southern ("Easy Rider") penned "Dr. Strangelove". The film attempted to make fun of bombastic military figures, lampooning Air Force General Curtis LeMay through George C. Scott's comedic General "Buck Turgidson". It succeeded as a great film, but not as a political statement. Ronald Reagan loved it.
A few years later, a '60s peacenik named Francis Ford Coppola, fresh out of UCLA Film School, wrote "Patton". He attempted to portray the World War II general as a mentally unbalanced warmonger. Scott's performance was one of the best in history. The result was the greatest, most patriotic war film ever made. Coppola (who won the Academy Award), could not have foreseen that Richard Nixon, after viewing "Patton" several times, would be emboldened to invade Cambodia, and that generations of West Point grads would consider the film a virtual primer.

Set right after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, "A Few Good Men" tries to show why officers from the "Patton school" were out-dated. The beauty of the script is in the character arc of Lieutenant Daniel Caffey (Tom Cruise). His father is the former Attorney General of the United States, and in this capacity he was a civil rights hero. Caffey never lived up to his dad's high expectations, although he graduated from Harvard Law School. He is skating by in the Navy JAG corps to satisfy family tradition. Demi Moore is a dedicated JAG lawyer who wants to do great things. Kevin Pollack (Lieutenant Sam Weinberg) is the guy who got picked on when he was a kid. The three of them get assigned to a case involving two "poster" Marines accused of murder at Guantanamo Bay. The Commander at Gitmo is Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Jessup (Jack Nicholson), in a role he did not win the Academy Award for, which is unbelievable. Jessup is about to be Assistant National Security Advisor, so he is very high up the Pentagon food chain.
Cruise is a slacker who pleads his cases, and is offered a sweetheart deal by the prosecutor, a Marine buddy played by Kevin Bacon. If the Marines plead out, the case goes away and after six months they are out of jail. The Marines are straight up and down, and say no. Demi, a so-so actress who rises to Oscar performance in a role she was born to play, takes Cruise to task. Normally a sexpot, she is not portrayed as anything but a professional officer and lawyer, and she wears it well. There is sexual tension with Cruise, but nicely underplayed. The elephant in the corner is the "code red" that everybody knows Nicholson ordered, but nobody can ask about. If he ordered the "code red," the boys are free, which leaves a slight fact discrepancy because a Marine died because of a hazing they administered. It is fair to ask why they are free if they were ordered, hung if not, since their actions are still the same.
Demi gets Cruise to stage two of his character arc by committing him to the case and to get Nicholson to admit to the "code red," which Cruise plans to do because he knows Jack does not like "hiding" from him. Pollack has been shuffling along with his "I have no responsibilities here whatsoever" act, but his role in the script is made clear. He backs up Demi's earlier faith in Cruise, and for the first time Cruise realizes he has special talent and can win. The finale is a doozie with Nicholson thundering away with a speech that Sorkin and Reiner must have really agonized over.
Nicholson represents Plato's "warrior spirit," protecting America's liberal peaceniks likeReiner and Sorkin. He gives an incredible dissertation on what it takes to do the heavy lifting that protects our cherished freedoms. Reiner and Sorkin resisted the chance to demonize Nicholson into the tired old conservative boogieman; the racist white officer (one of the Marines is black), stupid, a war glorifier. Instead, they let Nicholson make a speech that has been memorized and made into legend byconservatives and military officers. But Jack makes a mistake and lets Cruise lead him one step too far, admitting to the "code red" that wins the day. The twist, and the message, is in the final verdict in which the Marines are declared "not guilty" but are dishonorably discharged for "conduct unbecoming Marines." The black Marine gives the film its intended meaning by saying their conduct was unbecoming because they were not supposed to follow an illegal "code red" order (given to them by a Southern racist Christian, Kiefer Sutherland), against a weaker man, despite the consequences. Cruise tells them they do not need a patch to have honor, a line of pure gold. Pollack, who identified with the weaker man and did not like the macho Marines, melts because he sees his childhood tormentors symbolically apologize to him. Cruise has now earned his spurs and is no longer just Lionel Caffey's son.
"A Few Good Men" is a barnburner. The Sutherland role is its most heavy-handed bias. When he is told Cruise's father "made a lot of enemies in your neck of the woods" - Dixie - by letting "a little black girl" go to an all-white school, the subtle message is that he is a racist. Sutherland is further painted as a Bible thumper, the kind who have little patience for those who are not. Hollywood just brutalizes Christians. Nicholson also sneers at Pollack's screen name, Lieutenant Weinberg, a point that probably worked more against the Sorkin/Reiner message than for it. Nicholson is pointing out that Jews tend to be lawyers, while the Anglos do the fighting. The effect of the reference, however, causes people to make mental note of the fact that he is not entirely wrong. Reiner and Sorkin's "mistake" was in making Nicholson's character the real deal. In so doing, Jack thunders away with some of the best lines ever written.
"You both rise and sleep under the very blanket of freedom that I provide, then criticize the way I provide it," he tells Cruise. "I'd just as soon you said 'thank you' and went on your way, or picked up a weapon and stood a post. Either way, I don't give damn what it is you think you're entitled to."
The producers, like Coppola before them, likely failed to recognize that by not demonizing Nicholson enough, they left the door open to a point of view that runs counter-productive to their own. Nicholson speaks about "honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something"
Stone was horrified to discover that after excoriating "Wall Street" (1987), corporate hotshots for years thanked him for making a film that inspired their careers in high finance. Similarly, Reiner and Sorkin created a "monster" (Nicholson) who has inspired many to hear the words of Nathan Jessup and say, "Right on!"

(Screenwriter Steven Travers studied in the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television. He is the author of "Barry Bonds: Baseball's Superman" and "God's Country: A conservative, Christian worldview of how history formed the United States Empire and America's Manifest Destiny for the 21st Century".)

Summary of A Few Good Men (Special Edition)