FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
Locked and loaded
Demi Moore is all that she can be in formula macho pic
by Robert TarryG.I. Jane
directed by Ridley Scott
starring Demi Moore, Viggo Mortensen, Anne Bancroft, Jason BegheThe moronic title of this movie reveals more then you might think.
Except for a few minor, poorly explored plot diversions, this is a formula mud-and-guts-and-glory basic training epic that just happens to star a woman.
G.I. Joe becomes G.I. Jane, and the rest is straight out of the war movie stockpile.
Maybe it's this problem with authority thing, but these films never really push my buttons. If the G.I. Jane is to be believed, Navy SEAL recruits are fed from the garbage, get their broken legs ground into the dirt (maiming them for life), are beaten until they bleed from every pore and, oh yeah, endure simulated rape in front of a crowd of onlookers. (Memo to US military, re: lone superpower status. You don't have to try this hard.) This overcoming obstacles thing is meant to be inspiring, but really, you signed up for it, dipshit.
Into this world lands female test case Lt. Jordan O'Neill (a well-cast Demi Moore), hand picked by feisty Senator Lillian DeHaven (wonderfully played by Anne Bancroft) more for her relative femininity than for her qualifications. In a simplistic depiction of the political process, DeHaven is using O'Neill for the good PR and the political leverage, but she wants the problem to fix itself when O'Neill fails. (So much for sisters doing it for themselves.)
With that out of the way, the movie can concentrate on what it really cares about: torture. The SEAL camp led by Master Chief John Urgayle (Viggo Mortensen) - a poetry-spouting, scene-stealing figure in his little mustache, WKRP in Cincinnati haircut and not-at-all homoerotic short shorts - is a grueling test only 40 per cent of the recruits pass.
And when they finally do (after a brief, uninteresting pit stop in political statement land) the audience is rewarded with a ludicrous real combat scenario, complete with nondescript Arab bad guys, choppy editing, heroic gestures and border patrols that have the annoying habit of, you know, patrolling the borders of their sovereign nation. (But fear not, fresh recruits, the 38-billion-dollar Tomahawk helicopter is there to back you up and blow all 49 of those camel lovers out of the water with heat-seeking missiles! Don't mess with the US, Abduhl!)
Don't let the ads fool you. G.I Jane is not really a story of people fighting for acceptance. It's not even a story of people fighting against integration. It's a story of people fighting.
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