G.I. Jane
I was actually taken aback rewatching Ridley Scott’s “G.I. Jane” that it wasn’t a Jerry Bruckheimer production. I remembered it being under Disney’s Hollywood Pictures division, but I really thought it was also a Bruckheimer production, given its military narrative. That being said, it’s every bit as formulaic and jingoistic as anything Bruckheimer has produced, and Scott leans into the visual style he and his brother Tony (a long-time Bruckheimer collaborator) hard here.
Though the film doesn’t have a “based on a true story” label attached to it, I wonder how much truth there is infused into the screenplay by Danielle Alexandra and David Twohy as we see Lieutenant Jordan O’Neil (Demi Moore), a topographical analyst, go through the grueling training to become a Navy SEAL. Scott is someone who tries to remain authentic to real-life in films like this, so the training sequences, overseen by a hard-edge Commander Master Chief (John James Urgayle, played by Viggo Mortensen), probably play pretty close to accurate, and give us a relatively solid outlook at how real SEAL training is. O’Neil is the first woman to be given the chance to become a SEAL, and for a politician like Sen. DeHaven (Anne Bancroft), who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, it’s a good way to earn some PR for her re-election, and to present a more “inclusive” armed forces. O’Neil doesn’t want to be used as a political pawn, though, nor does she want to be treated differently during training because of her sex. Her success in the program will be a double-edged sword, however, that forces some hard choices for everyone around her. Three guesses as to what the end result will be?
This is a film that wants to be both a progressive treatise on the expansion of women’s role in the US military, as well as a popcorn action movie. As the former, the shape of it is obvious, but I’m not certain how well it lands any punches beyond the superficial. As the latter, it succeeds relatively well, with Scott managing a deft balancing act between exploiting a ripped Moore (though he has plenty of gratuitous shots of her working out that verge on music video slickness), and not shying away from how brutal the training is she is going through. The success of this film lands with Moore, Mortensen and Scott, and all three of them hold up their end of the bargain well, with solid support by Bancroft. The ending veers too far into “Top Gun” “rah rah” heroism, and the way Scott and cinematographer Hugh Johnson shoot it left much to be desired, and feels too jangly and “edgy” for its own good, but it’s tough not to get on board with the story, and the way it’s told, for much of it’s running time.
