CROCK: A FEW GOOD MEN
In the last several years, Aaron Sorkin has become one of my favorite writers. He wrote the film THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT, which was quite enjoyable. He's the man behind two TV shows I like a lot, the prematurely canceled "Sports Night" and the hit show "The West Wing." Not only that, but since he had a hand in writing almost every script of those shows, his imprint lies large. It would be nice to say that his first film, Rob Reiner's A FEW GOOD MEN, showed that talent waiting in the wings, but while it's entertaining in a glib way, it's also a crock.
The movie fits in the mold of courtroom thrillers, and it's pretty basic. At the beginning, in Guatanamo Bay, Cuba, two Marines, Lance Corporal Dawson (Wolfgang Bodison), and Private Downey (James Marshall) are seen stuffing a rag down the throat of another Marine, Private Santiago (Michael DeLorenzo). Santiago ends up dying from that incident, and the two Marines are charged with murder. Lt. Commander Joanne Galloway (Demi Moore), of Navy Internal Affairs, believes there's something going on, and petitions the Navy to let her defend them. The Navy instead allows her to oversee the case, but hands it to Lt. Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise), a Navy lawyer who specializes in pleading out cases, and whose father was the former U.S. Attorney General. Kaffee is also inclined to plead out, even though Dawson maintains they weren't trying to kill Santiago, just haze him under orders from Col. Nathan Jessup (Jack Nicholson), through his second-in-command, Lt. John Kendrick (Kiefer Sutherland). Eventually, though, Kaffee decides to pursue, and prove that they, in fact, were ordered to.
That's pretty much the ballgame there. As one critic put it, the entire movie's as if Sorkin was writing a 138 minute speech (the movie's length) just as taught in public speaking classes: tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you've told them. Okay for an episode of a TV show, but not stretched out to feature length. Still, that's the least of the movie's problems.
I should mention at first the good parts here. Sorkin's gift for writing funny dialogue is in evidence here, and since Reiner comes from comedy, he gets the most out of the humor. Three examples; early on, while playing softball, Kaffee has to wrangle with a prosecutor who wants to nail one of Kaffee's clients for being caught with a dime bag of oregano he thought was marijuana, to which Kaffee replies, "My client's a moron. That's not against the law." A little later, Lt. Cdr. Galloway interrupts Kaffee during another softball practice to tell him she doesn't think he's fit to handle the defense, and he says, "You don't even know me. Normally it takes someone hours to realize I'm not fit to handle their defense." The best part, though, is in a courtroom scene, where Captain Jack Ross (Kevin Bacon), the prosecutor, challenges a Marine (Noah Wyle) about the hazing ritual (known in the movie as a "Code Red"), saying it can't be authorized if it's not in the Marine handbook. On redirect, Kaffee asks the same questions about the mess hall, also not in the Marine handbook.
Latest Articles