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Strong and Moving!

Just perfect...

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

G.I. Jane (1997): Dir: Ridley Scott / Cast: Demi Moore, Viggo Mortensen, Anne Bancroft, Scott Wilson, Morris Chestnut: A film about a woman in a man's world with violence being the key factor. Demi Moore gives a convincing portrayal of a woman in military training and trying to withstand painstaking labour, crude gender jokes, and eating out of a trash bin. She exercises constantly and even shaves her head to blend in but outside forces attempt to sabotage her. What really comes across is her sense of human worth and her demand to be treated equally. During war games her entire troop is captured and she endures torture at the hands of her commander. Director Ridley Scott is skilled at presenting realism but the screenplay is marred with clichés and predictable ending that borders on farce. Scott has made superior films such as Blade Runner and Alien but this is hardly ranking up there with films that demonstrated greater skill. Moore displays a real sense of individuality while her co-stars surrender to stereotypes. Viggo Mortensen plays her heavy handed commander in what is easily a predictable stereotype with all the integrity of a playground bully. Anne Bancroft is also wasted in a role of a woman who is stuck so far back in tradition that it is a wonder that she exists in real time. For Moore this is barely a step up from Striptease. Message of equality is strong. Score: 5 ½ / 10

When this film came out I ignored it and finally got around to seeing some of it on You Tube recently. I watched about half an hour although I did anticipate watching the whole movie. Alas I was just so bored with it by the 30 minute mark I had to withdraw from the battlefield.And it was obviously going to be a real battle against boredom to survive the whole 2 hours of this travesty of a film. Clichéd dialogue from the start, exaggerated acting, the whole thing is a cartoon of reality. Of course the main premise is nonsense, a female navy seal is out to show the patriarchy that women can do the job just as well but that isn't what seals the fate of this trash.No, what seals the fate of this trash is the superficial photography and fast editing that makes the film look like a TV commercial, which isn't surprising when you consider that's what Ridley Scott is, a TV commercial director.I like Blade Runner, Alien, The Duelists, but post Blade Runner I think Ridley, like his brother Tony now deceased, has taken the lazy route of film direction and relying mostly on visuals at the expense of depth and substance.Not much more to say other than avoid this turkey. Doing 100 press ups is much more fun than watching this but I'm sure there will be a few monkey brains who will like this.

G.I.Jane has some obvious flaws. Not the least of which is when Demi Moore walks into the mess with obviously no bra on under her white tee shirt. No self respecting female trying to get into the world of a macho, hyper-testosterone fueled job would do anything to accentuate her femininity. No makeup,no feminine underwear,nothing that makes her different than a male recruit. A fact shown to good example when Moore shaves all her hair off during a break and I give her credit for actually doing it and not faking it by wearing a wig. That takes guts. As someone who has been through something similar,I can tell you that not being wanted in a group of men elicits a type of behavior in a group mentality that would never happen if the man was alone. I really enjoyed this film despite some of its problems at suspending disbelief. For example, when the master chief is looking at the exercise where the recruits are in the rain, climbing forward on their bellies under barbed wire, he's "seeing" the action that wouldn't be possible through a scope or binoculars. Another is when each team in is the water and picked up "on the go" as the inflatable rafts rush by. Each male is given help by someone inside the raft and hoisted up inside. Yet when Moore's character turn comes, there is no help and she slips back into the water. She's unable to do it but is later criticized by the Master Chief for not being able to lift her "own body weight." Well, we don't know if that's so or not, as all the males were helped getting inside. There are other instances of such examples but the thing that makes this film work for me is I know how it feels to be unwanted and be considered incapable of doing what's considered typically a "man's job." The politics and technical mistakes aside, the real essence of the film is if a woman wants to fight for her country she should be able to.

The first thing that I heard about this movie was that the US Navy was opposed to making it and was very resistant to allowing Scott to use any of their facilities. I don't know what happened in the end but they seemed to be using some pretty hi-tech weaponry. One just doesn't walk down to a corner store and buy an Apache, though I thought the Apache was being used very ineffectively in the situation. Basically the Navy Seals were being pursued by a Lybian border patrol and they were on foot, so the Apache was firing missiles. I would have used the chain gun because it is much more effective against infantry than missiles, missiles are for tanks and other vehicles.G.I. Jane is a protest movie and it is about women in the military in front line jobs. The Navy Seals are said to be the best of the front line troops and thus we focus on this. The movie is much more political and deals a lot with the political ramifications of what is going on. The biggest protest here is that nobody wants to bring women home in body bags. What the women say is that they can do anything that a man can do, so if a man can be a front line soldier, then a woman should be as well. Starship Troopers actually has women as front line soldiers. We see the main character wanting to be treated like all the other men, but at first she is given help because they feel that she needs it. What she doesn't want is to be treated any differently. The is opposition to what she is doing but it doesn't come out as strong as it did in the previews. In the previews we are led to believe that everywhere she goes she faces opposition, but this is not true. People do try to persuade her from doing it, but she is stubborn and continues.It is the political side of the movie that draws the criticism. The politicians say that they don't want women coming home in body bags. The whole idea is about change and people don't want to do it. Feminisim is a very strong force in today's society and now we are moving further into what originally were male only jobs. Today we see women weightlifters and labourers, but we still don't see women soldiers. In Australia we have women on the naval ships but not in infantry. Now, in this movie, we see the beginnings of a protest against this.The movie itself was a little confusing at times because the characters seem to mumble and it was hard to concentrate with Louisa and Melissa doing their usual girly things behind me, but that was not Ridley Scott's fault. His dark, wet style is very evident here, though it is quite different to Burton's style. Scott focuses more on this protest, and his darkness is much more realistic. Scott seems to keep the movie dark as a symbol of this world where women are not free to do what they like. Scott also seems to like rain because it is raining a lot in this movie. This seems to symbolise the struggle that the soldiers are going through in the training.The training is very hard, and Scott reminds us of this constantly. They eat from bins and go through training to handle torture and capture. They are beaten up, drowned, and pushed to the limit. They say that there is a 60% dropout rate, and most of them want Jane to do it, but she doesn't. She makes it through a large part of the course only to become a political embarrassment.