A Few Good Men (1992)_____9/10
A morality play that hits on all cylinders

Written by Aaron Sorkin
Directed by Rob Reiner

Tom Cruise … Lt. Daniel Kaffee
Jack Nicholson … Col. Nathan R. Jessep
Demi Moore … Lt. Cdr. JoAnne Galloway
Kevin Bacon … Capt. Jack Ross
Kiefer Sutherland … Lt. Jonathan Kendrick
Kevin Pollak … Lt. Sam Weinberg
Wolfgang Bodison…Lance Cpl. Harold W. Dawson
James Marshall … Pfc. Louden Downey
J.T. Walsh … Lt. Col. Matthew Andrew Markins

“Harold, you don’t need to wear a patch on your arm to have honor.” — Lt. Daniel Kaffee

What’s special, or even topical, about this movie is it speaks to how military honor can be so readily suborned by the authoritarian impulse.  And second, how the same honest pride—not to mention competence—is necessary to bring such posturing would-be tyrants to justice.

No, I”m not going to launch into another angled criticism of the Bushoviks; but the facts are apropos: in the name of a notion of high-minded military protection the Cheney-Bush Oil Junta (CBOJ) performs criminal acts of the highest, deadliest, and most treasonable nature.

CBOJ’s acts are much worse in scale than what Colonel Nathan Jessep (Jack Nicholson in an Academy Award-winning role) is ultimately accused of, which is ordering a “Code Red” that winds up killing a Marine in his barracks on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (Gitmo). But what he’s accused of is of the same essence, bred of the same perverse conceit of absolute power. Continue reading →