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Grunt Work
By Devin D. O'Leary
AUGUST 25, 1997:
Ridley, Ridley. Why hast thou forsaken me? Can the cinematic genius
who gifted me with Blade Runner, lo these 15 years ago,
really be the same lame-o who's now cranking out Hollywood dross
like White Squall? Can the same director who broke new
ground with Thelma & Louise really have churned this
tub of lard starring Demi Moore and her $12-million breasts? The
answer, sadly, is "yes."
First off, a "G.I." is somebody in the Army. This movie
is about the Navy. When you're walking into the theater to see
a movie and there's already a major gaff on the poster in the
lobby, you know you're in trouble. G.I. Jane follows the
story of one Lt. Jordan O'Neil (Moore), a naval intelligence officer
who--thanks to the political maneuverings of a woman senator (Anne
Bancroft)--becomes the first female candidate for the Navy SEALs.
The SEALs are the military's elite special forces team. According
to this flick, their training is so rigorous that 60 percent of
the trainees drop out. Naturally, everyone is expecting our plucky
heroine to fail. Naturally, she encounters much sexism and discrimination
among the troops. Just as naturally, she shaves her head, gets
buff, perseveres and earns everyone's respect in the end. Big
whoop.
The saddest thing about G.I. Jane is that its script (from
David Twohy, who scored a winner with The Fugitive and
a loser with Waterworld) goes absolutely nowhere. Aside
from the gimmick of making its main character a woman, it's a
carbon copy of any one of a dozen other boot camp movies: People
in fatigues run up and down mountains in the rain, crawl under
barbed wire in the mud, climb over walls in the beating sun. If
you've seen the first half of Full Metal Jacket, then you've
already seen G.I. Jane. Hollywood Pictures has been plugging
the hell out this film, setting up two weeks worth of prerelease
screenings to generate (presumably) good word of mouth. I can't
believe the general populace really wants to see military types
being brutalized for two hours. Granted, there's a certain twisted
S&M appeal to seeing lovely Demi Moore tortured, beaten and
dragged through the mud for 120 minutes. But, c'mon, it doesn't
really make for much of a movie.
I will admit that Viggio Mortensen (Crimson Tide, The Prophecy)
is pretty effective as the scary, brutal command master chief,
barking insults and orders at his battered troops. But once you've
seen R. Lee Ermey (a real-deal boot camp commander during Vietnam)
do this same shtick in Full Metal Jacket, everything else
is downhill. Demi Moore doesn't exactly embarrass herself here,
but she knows what side her bread is buttered on. The most memorable
scenes in the entire film are
two extended music sequences in which Demi a) shaves off all her
lovely locks (for shock value) and b) does one-armed push-ups
in a tight tank top (for titillation value). Not exactly a meaty
acting challenge there. Seeing as how Demi's hit films can be
counted on a single finger (Ghost, and that was seven years
ago), while her bombs (The Butcher's Wife, Seventh Sign, Mortal
Thoughts, Striptease, The Scarlet Letter, The Juror)
just keep coming, I have to wonder how long those $12-million
paychecks will hold out.
Why a talented filmmaker like Ridley Scott chose to make a generic
star vehicle like this is beyond me. Scott's aggressively visual
style has here been reduced to a couple slow-mo fetish shots of
helicopters cutting through battlefield smoke. G.I. Jane could
have been helmed by any Hollywood hack with no appreciable difference.
Hell, this film could have been directed by Tony Scott.
While his brother Ridley was back in England making a masterpiece
out of Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,
Tony was off in Tinseltown crapping out suck-up summer fare like
Top Gun, Days of Thunder and Beverly Hills Cop 2.
I guess Ridley got a little jealous of all that Hollywood money
after a while and sold his soul to the Devil for a paycheck. Welcome
to Hollywood, Ridley. Now go back home to England and make some
movies.
--Devin D. O'Leary
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