Get the Message
Dr. Daniel's review of G. I. Jane

in for observation

Starring Demi Moore, Jason Beghe, Viggo Mortensen, Anne Bancroft, Daniel von Bargen, John Michael Higgins, Lucinda Jenney, Morris Chestnut

Directed by Ridley Scott. Rated R.

    Okay, here's the deal. I've never been too fond of message movies. Anybody out there remember one called Prophecy? It was a sci-fi horror flick about some gooey monster created by toxic pollution -- mercury poisoning, if I remember right. This thing was s'posed to be the harbinger of doom, brought about 'cause somebody spit wrong into a lake, and now the world's gonna die at the hands of its grubby little flippers (hands, paws, whatever....) The message? Give a hoot, don't pollute. My, how subtle. Sure it was moronic, but it follows the basic message movie formula: 1) pronounce your message within the opening ten minutes of exposition; 2) repeat the message with the first plot twist; 3) keep hammering your message into the eyes and ears of the filmgoer at ever possible moment thereafter.
     If you're gonna make me change my thinking, do it with grace, not at the point of a gun. The China Syndrome was a keeper, albeit a little preachy in the climax. JFK was slick, but about as delicate as chewing on a ground-glass sandwich. Death Wish was a message movie too, but that's not a message I want carried around in the satchels of the masses.
     So, when I first heard about G. I. Jane, and when I heard Ridley Scott was directing it, I almost slammed the mental door on it and threw away the key. This thing had "Liberation Hootenanny" written all over it, and Scott's Thelma and Louise had already worn a groove in that ground. My third wife saw T&L with her buddy Peg, and, if we hadn't separated first, I'd have paid those two to drive off a cliff in a convertible. She preached the "Gospel According To Thelma and Louise" 'til I thought I'd heave beefaroni soufflé on the dinette. And now, Ridley Scott wants to stick it to the Armed Services, and show us all that ladies can be soldiers too. A heaping helping of T&L, by way of Courage Under Fire. No thank you.
     I could not have been more wrong in my life. Ridley Scott has done the impossible. He's made one kickin' dang movie, and, better yet, he made it with Demi Moore.
     "Curse of Death" Demi plays Navy officer Jordan O'Neil, a career intelligence officer who was passed over for active duty during the Gulf War 'cause -- get this, folks -- there are no ladies' rooms on submarines. (Serious - that's the reason.) Well, a certain Senator, played tough as nails by Anne Bancroft, catches wind of this, and realizes that Jordan could be just the woman to throw a soppin' wet blanket on the military's "good ol' boy" system. The ticket is a woman who's tough enough to make it through the Navy SEAL training program.
     Jordan agrees, and gets a hardy go-get-'em from the Navy, 'cause they all know that SEAL training is the meanest, toughest, chunkiest thing that can challenge a sailor, and most men don't even make it through the first week. So why worry about pretty lil' Jordan, right?
     Guess again, my testosterone-filled friends. Jordan takes everything they dish out. They can't make her quit. As she tells her camp commander, she's "not a poster child for women's rights." She just wants to be treated like any other candidate, and her bigoted classmates and her merciless master chief (Viggo Mortensen) are happy to oblige.
     Now, it'd be easy to write this thing off as a feminist manifesto. Don't. It would be easy to say it's a female spin on An Officer and a Gentleman. You'd be closer there, but this goes a step further. In Officer, we had training, we had love stories, we had three or four plotlines running together. Here, we are focused on the training process -- the bitter, painful, bloody trial that a SEAL candidate goes through to be the best of the best. The message here is about loneliness and the pain of being an outsider in an insiders' world.
     The most surprising thing about G.I. Jane is not the light touch of the message or the accessible, entertaining storyline. It's the performance of Demi Moore. In recent efforts, Demi's name on the marquee was about as welcome in theaters as a locust convention in Ancient Egypt. That she could have such a string of septic-tank celluloid and still earn staggering sums is outrageous. The biggest hit she's had since Ghost was as an uncredited voice in Beavis and Butt-Head Do America. She managed to tiptoe through A Few Good Men without damaging the goods, but Rob Reiner had the smarts to keep her in support, where she could do the least amount of damage. Other than that, her recent filmography is a veritable Weather Channel special on natural disasters -- The Scarlet Letter, The Juror, Now And Then, and...most recently, the horrific Striptease. Let's face it, when a washed-up Burt Reynolds gets better reviews than the 16 million dollar Demi, it's time to question the wisdom of a producer showing her the greenlight.
     In G. I. Jane, though, she acts her heart out, and, lord help us, it's like finding a dollar in the cushions of your couch. It's totally unexpected, it won't rock your world, but dang if it doesn't make you feel good. She's still slightly untouchable and humorless. But that characteristic works here like it's never been able to in the past. The soggy wellin' up teary eyeballs are a memory. They're replaced by a stare like steel. The sexy hairstyles are gone, thanks to a buzz-clipper. Forgive the pun, but she's stripped to the bare essentials and forced to work from within herself. Like her character, she has to dig into her soul to pull off this role, and she does. It wouldn't surprise me to hear her name called come February for an Oscar® nom. Never thought I'd see myself type that, but it just might happen.
     The rest of the cast is as heartless and cold as you'd expect. Mortensen spends the entire movie trying to out-Gossett every other taskmaster in movie history. Bancroft plays another "tough broad," much like her role in Point of No Return, but, this time the character is much more believable as a politician than it was as the principal of a spy school.
     The real credit for the success of G. I. Jane must be steered toward director Ridley Scott. Instead of galloping subplots or sledgehammer idealisms, he makes his points with subtlety. The movie drops the feminism rant rather quickly and becomes more of an underdog story. Oh, we're given ample opportunity to chew on the gender inequality issue, but we're taught the lesson like preschoolers being shown the fire exit. Then, that message becomes an afterthought, and the audience begins to root for Jordan, and I mean cheering, applauding, foot-stomping rooting. The theater I was in looked to be an even 50-50 split, male and female, yet we got more than a couple of full house ovations during the screening.
     Scott has taken the Officer and a Gentleman ethic and thrown away all the gloss. He replaces it with the soul of the first Rocky movie, that gritty, tooth-and-nail fighter, trying to prove he belongs somewhere in the world. He makes an actress out of Demi Moore and in doing so redefines an entire genre of movie. And, if he'd left out the ludicrous, trumped-up military skirmish to show the SEALS in action, I would've admired him even more. I realize this is an expected scene used to show the moral victory and all that, but couldn't he have made it at least more believable than that silly thing at the end of Heartbreak Ridge? You know, that thing about the island off the coast of...oh, yeah. That was Grenada. That silly thing really happened. Never mind....
     At any rate, I'm thrilled to tell you that Demi Moore has joined the Stallone-Willis Club for high-priced stars who've learned to act on the job. My dear patients, your hard-earned green will not be wasted on G. I. Jane. In fact, it might just be the thing to introduce you to a new character -- Demi Moore, Legitimate Actress.