IN THE HEART OF THE NATION’S CAPITAL, IN A COURTHOUSE OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT, ONE MAN WILL STOP AT NOTHING TO KEEP HIS HONOR, AND ONE WILL STOP AT NOTHING TO FIND THE TRUTH.
Inexperienced U.S. Navy lawyer Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) takes a case where two Marines stationed at Guantanamo stand accused of having killed a fellow Marine. Aaron Sorkin’s breakthrough play got the best possible kind of Hollywood treatment, a glamorously photographed, hugely entertaining and cleverly expanded adaptation of the one-acter. Loosely based on real events, the film digs deeper into the power structures that lie behind the “code red” case and leads to a wonderfully intense showdown between Cruise and Jack Nicholson in the courtroom. The latter gives a brilliantly intimidating performance as an old warrior who’s turned into Queeg without realizing it.
1992-U.S. 138 min. Color. Widescreen. Produced by David Brown, Rob Reiner, Andrew Scheinman. Directed by Rob Reiner. Screenplay, Play: Aaron Sorkin. Cinematography: Robert Richardson. Editing: Robert Leighton. Cast: Tom Cruise (Daniel Kaffee), Jack Nicholson (Nathan Jessup), Demi Moore (JoAnne Galloway), Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Pollak… Christopher Guest, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Noah Wyle.
Quote: “You see Danny, I can deal with the bullets, and the bombs, and the blood. I don’t want money, and I don’t want medals. What I do want is for you to stand there in that faggoty white uniform and with your Harvard mouth extend me some fucking courtesy.” (Nicholson to Cruise)
Last word: “We have this eighteen-minute scene in the courtroom at the end, and [Nicholson’s] got a speech that’s, like, two pages long. And he gets all worked up. He comes in there and bangs it right off. He’s there to work and do his job. And then we did coverage on all the other people, and he was off-camera. He must have done the thing fifty times, with the same amount of enthusiasm, with the same amount of energy every time. I was surprised, because you get ideas about a guy of his stature. And I said, ‘Jack, it’s amazing, you do your…’ And he says to me simply, ‘Raab, I love to act. I don’t get a chance to play a part this good very often.’ And that’s it. He loves to act.” (Reiner, TCM)
