G.I. Jane

This movie received lot's of hate and to be honest I can only assume it was due to bad publicity.

It has a great cast who all play their parts well. Demi Moore got a razzie for this which is totally unjustified as she plays her part really well. It has great music and is definitely in the list of good Ridley Scott movies.

I'd put it up with "Jarhead", "Tigerland" or "Heartbreak Ridge" any day of the week.

Recommended.

Senator DeHaven (Anne Bancroft) pressures the Navy to be gender blind. They accept as long as a woman test case can measure up to the men's standards. They figure on the U.S. Navy Combined Reconnaissance Team which has a 60% wash out rate. DeHaven picks Lieutenant Jordan O'Neil (Demi Moore) out of the approved candidates for her looks. Command Master Chief John James Urgayle (Viggo Mortensen) is their trainer. She has to overcome expectations, sexism, politics and the pressure of the program to succeed.

There is nothing surprising or original in this movie. It's got all the training and director Ridley Scott is an expert at jazzing up those 'action' scenes. The most compelling originality comes from Demi Moore shaving her hair. I do have to say that she looks fierce with the bald head. She looks fierce generally and Scott has her exercising up a storm. The movie probably needs some of the other characters to step up but nobody can ever be on the same level as Demi.

Demi Moore shines with shiners and a bit more in an often brutal film about the first woman to enter the elite Navy SEALS training. While some scenes in the movie, such as the confusing end battle, seem a little out of place (exactly who were the trainees fighting?) the film moves along with startling pace and precision. Moore, who as everyone knows shaved her head for the role of Jordan O'Neill, is tough but feminine and internally vulnerable as a woman scorned by her male teammates. The most violent scene in the film comes during the survival exercise in which O'Neill is bashed around by the Master Chief. It's gruesome but necessary, and O'Neill earns her fellow trainees' support during the ordeal.

It's easy to film a star faking the Navy Seal training. The key line of the movie is uttered by Demi Moore when she is beaten to a bloody pulp by Master Chief in training while the rest of the trainees watch. She gets up and spits out "suck my dick" thereby claiming a virtual penis so that she can offer the ultimate insult to Master Chief and become an honorary male to the cheers of the men. At no point does the movie ever deal with the way men would really react to a good looking woman in their midst while undergoing a trial which most of them fail in real life. This is feminist propaganda turned into sensational Hollywood entertainment that belies the truth and turns GI Jane into a another racist she male who can gun down expendable lesser breeds such as Arabs with the best of them on their secret mission to Libya.

This movie was good as far as accuracy to the military as a whole. The one real problem I had with it was the fact that Demi Moore did extra physical training while she was supposed to be in her rack. I'm sorry I don't care what kind of metabolism you have, or even if you have extra respiratory organs, you can't do more training than what they already do in the SEAL program and cut-out sleep and expect to get stronger that way. If anything you'd eventually tire yourself into a chronic state of fatigue and get yourself disqualified.