A Few Good Men

As a director, Reiner's scorecard is stellar. With This is Spinal Tap!, The Sure Thing, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally..., and Misery, Reiner has chalked up an impressive number of popular hits and A Few Good Men will certainly continue that record. It's an odd pick for an audience favorite though, this military arm-wrestler/courtroom drama. Sure, it boasts the talents of marquee darlings Cruise (who did so much for military uniforms in Top Gun) and Nicholson, both of whom earn their stripes in this picture. But this relentlessly male, semper fi, buzzcut mentality achieves for male-identified anaerobic chambers what Sylvia Plath did for female-identified belljars. Part morality tale, part coming of age story, A Few Good Men centers on a second-generation Navy lawyer Lt. Kaffee (Cruise) who is ordered to defend two Marines whose unsanctioned disciplinary action results in the death of their victim whose crime had been breaking the chain of command. The clever yet lackadaisical Kaffee, who is biding his time in the military subsumed by the shadow of his famous, dead, attorney-for-the-Navy father, is assigned to the case because he's the king of the plea bargain. But, instead of making this case go away, as he is expected to do, Kaffee (goaded by Moore) discovers his conscience and launches a spirited defense based on finding the fissure in the Marine code of honor. This requires him to take down the reigning Marine power Col. Jessep (Nicholson). The heart of this movie lies in its ethical questions: at what point should an individual reject official orders when they conflict with personal beliefs and knowledge. Shadows of Nuremberg and My Lai loom over this movie, as do shadows cast by contemporary figures like Oliver North and Caspar Weinberger. A Few Good Men is also a gem of a courtroom drama with the glib, young Kaffee learning to turn his facilities into tools for the defense. Moore's Joanne Galloway provides a fitting foil for his growth with her unskilled, yet passionate, approach to the law. To the movie's credit, Moore's role, though a transparent move to add some female presence, refrains from becoming a love story subplot. A Few Good Men is a decidedly butch melodrama and the performances reflect that intensity. Nicholson, most notably, goes so far beyond anyplace we've ever seen him go before that I'm not even sure how to characterize his performance. His lead seems to have been followed by the others; Sutherland is frightening as a true believer, Bacon is scorching as the prosecuting attorney and Cruise, once again, soft-pedals his amazing talent by making it all look so easy. If anything, A Few Good Men errs by throwing almost too many elements, themes and moral debates into the mix thus, by default, they sometimes seem shallowly developed and overly simple. Then again, that perhaps allows them to connect with more universal experiences. Coming out of the theatre, I overheard one moviegoer telling his companions how the military was not the only place that things like this occurred. He witnessed similar things when he played football. Ultimately, the extent to which this hermetic military story reverberates into the dilemmas of civilian life will be the true measure of its success.