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A Few Good Men (Special Edition) Customer Reviews (10 - 12 of 46 Reviews)

A Few Great Performances
As a former Marine and one who has seen the effects of war and the ability to take and to follow orders,..I now understand what this movie asks of us.Do we question orders?Do we decide what is right or wrong?In a classic portrayal as a young U.S. Navy "JAG" luietenant Tom Cruise turns in as what can only be called a "stunning" performance and maybe the best of his career.A young man with an attitude,..Cruise has the case of his life before him but does not realize it until the facts begin to present themself to him.Intrique is the word of the day and when the cast get's going they will roll you over with great performances,...the courtroom scene between Cruise and co-star Jack Nicholson is unmatched in film history,..and is classic!Cruise to Nicholson,.."I want the truth!"....,and Nicholson returns with,.."You can't HANDLE the truth!"It does not get much better than this in today's cinema,...and only makes you yearn for these kind of movies again.

One good reason to watch this film: Nicholson!
"A Few Good Men", directed by Rob Reiner and based on the screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, should easily make anyone's list of the top 50 films ever made. However, the film does take certain liberties in its portrayal of Marine culture and military justice. As a civilian myself, I am certainly not an authority on the subject. However, it doesn't take Einstein to figure out that no Judge Advocates General attorney speaks to their superiors the way Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) does and gets away with it. While I realize that Cruise aimed for a comic approach to his "boy entering manhood" trademark role, I was disappointed to see the rest of the cast seeming to play along with his irreverence.

Nevertheless, his cavalier attitude towards authority figures sets up a few stellar rebukes from his costars, notably Lt. Com. JoAnne Galloway (Demi Moore) and of course, the crowd favorite Lt. Col. Nathan R. Jessup (Jack Nicholson). While Cruise probably had the best perfomance of his career (along with a strong supporting cast in Moore, Kevin Pollak, Kevin Bacon, J.T. Walsh, and Keifer Sutherland), Nicholson steals the show. His "you can't handle the truth!" monologue alone is worth the price of admission.

The cinematography of this film is absolutely mind blowing, except for one matte shot of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba that looks very fake. The Windward Division barracks reminds me of a base I saw in Key West, Florida. The courtroom is shown from all angles, almost like being there yourself, and you feel a real sense of history in the place. Pay attention to the lighting. Reiner mentions the lighting in his director commentary, and yes, it does make a difference in how you experience the film.

The widescreen special edition of "A Few Good Men" has the obligatory extras. Reiner is not very talkative in the director commentary, which is disappointing. However, there are a few bonuses, such as a special documentary made for the DVD, production notes, spoken language selections for French, Portuguese, Spanish, and plenty of chapter selections (for those who prefer to skip to their favorite parts).

All in all, a great movie. I give it three stars for factual accuracy, four stars for cinematography and musical score, and five stars for the over the top peformances of Nicholson, Cruise, and Moore. These average out to the four star rating. Buy it, forget about the flaws, and enjoy the performances of an A-list cast.

An historical and contemporary footnote
The introduction of fake evidence involving flight manifests at the end of the movie trips up Colonel Jessup (the Nicholson character), who assumes that evidence about to be introduced will nail him. I've seen the threat of similar fake evidence used in some Law & Order episodes.

The need for airport flight manifests and other records has both a contemporary echo and historical precedent. At present (November 2005), several European governments are investigating alleged CIA renditions of prisoners to Poland and Romania. From an Internet site: "Human Rights Watch examined flight logs of CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004, said Mark Garlasco, a senior military analyst with the New York-based organization. He said the group matched the flight patterns with testimony from some of the hundreds of detainees in the war on terrorism who have been released by the United States. . . . He would not say how the organization obtained the flight logs, but said two destinations of the flights stood out as likely sites of any secret CIA detention centers: Szymany Airport in Poland, which is near the headquarters of Poland's intelligence service; and Mihail Kogalniceanu military airfield in Romania."

The historical precedent is the Moscow Frame-up Trials of the 1930s that were staged by Stalin against Trotsky and others that Stalin feared (even though they had already been defeated within the Soviet Union). Trotsky was in exile in Norway. There was testimony that one of Trotsky's alleged fellow conspirators flew from Berlin to Oslo in December to meet with Trotsky in order to plan terrorist activities against the Stalin government. However, it was shown that during the alleged time period no planes had landed at Oslo, thus undermining a material "fact" that was introduced to give legitimacy to the obviously forced confessions.

It is an irony of history (doesn't it have many!), that the countries that are apparently involved also suffered from Stalin's tyranny.

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