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I graduated from The Citadel and can tell you that the book is not a standing joke on campus and that almost everyone reads it during their knob year for their English class. It is true that upperclassmen are not allowed to touch knobs but this is a rule that was very loosely enforced in the 60s. I was not there in the 60s but it is a well known fact on campus and by alumni. I have never heard anything of that nature and I believe they made it worse than it really was in order to make people watch it and enjoy reading the book. All in all the book is much better than the movie. Read the book don't watch the movie, or at least read the book first.

I was impressed with how well this movie captured the flavor of time and place. As a viewer I easily felt that it was Charleston, SC in the mid 1960's. The parts were well-cast and convincingly played. I would be comfortable suggesting this movie to others and would not mind seeing it again myself.

Having read Pat Conroy's original novel years ago I found that the characters in the movie looked remarkably like my imagination expected them to. That was another plus.

However......and this is minor......Pat Conroy's novels tend to be sprawling affairs with several plot lines (and the ensuing chaos) running concurrently. They do not condense down into a standard length feature film without editing a good bit of the original novel out. This is the case here......several minor items had to be changed for the movie to cover the fact that one of the major plot elements in the novel were left out entirely.

I enjoyed this movie thoroughly. Now i have never read the novel it is based on so i am not disillusioned by how "bland" an adaptation this is, but i must say that this was an interesting, intriguing and enjoyable film. It was deep and thought provoking and provided an insight into what was... and possibly still is considered to be the making of a man and a soldier.

Also, the fact that it is a veritable melting pot of future stars and character actors doesn't hurt. David Keith as a likeable character? Michael Biehn and Bill Paxton, a year before making Terminator together, a few years before making Aliens and ages before making Tombstone. Judge Reinhold, Rick Rossovich (the guy from Roxanne and pacific blue), Matt Frewer (HE LOOKS SO YOUNG!!!), the fat guy out of Godzilla (he is great). It was interesting seeing all these people in these roles, big and small.

Moral of the story, great flick :)

Will McLean (David Keith) is a senior cadet at the Carolina Military Institute, a school that promises to make men of honor but practises brutal hazing to freshmen. McLean's roommates are Dante Pignetti (Rick Rossovich), Mark Santoro and Tradd St. Croix. In the time spent there McLean will join all the academy's activities (except breaking new cadets) and will see the corruption inside the institute, and will also try to unmask it (without some trouble and Pignetti getting expelled).

Despite I have not read the original novel LORDS OF DISCIPLINE I still liked the movie because it has some very good acting by everyone. I am not a huge David Keith fan but here he was very good as the lead, Rick Rossovich was very funny as the cadet that didn't stopped screaming, while Michael Biehn and Judge Reinhold give some of their best performances in their careers. The plot was great as there were lots of twists and turns when the leads were finding the truth.

Overall, a good militar academy drama that excedded my expectations as I was very surprised that I liked it very much. If you are searching something underrated from the 1980s, then this is for you.

The movie is adequate and casting for "The Bear" was perfect. The film lost the eliminate of mystery and intrigue the book had. By showing "The Ten" to early and on campus they stole from the mythology of the fraternity. On the other hand, it is impossible to make a film that lives up to a Conroy novel as their is just too much. If a producer was smart they would hire Pat Conroy to make a TV series out of any one of his novels. I don't mean a mini series, but an actual TV series that would probably need to run three seasons. If Conroy didn't want to write the series than David E. Kelley could possibly do justice to many of Conroy's novels or in the case of the Lords Of Discipline Arron Sorkin could possibly write it. Obviously Pat would be the ideal writer though. Trying to do any Conroy novel in a two or even three hour film is just ridiculous. That's why "The Prince of Tides" was such a bad film. It did not stand a chance of having even the same story line as the novel because the real story could not be covered by a film.