A Few Good Men (1992)

★★★★

Who's this for?
People who love courtroom dramas, The West Wing and other Sorkin works, or well-written dialogue.

MVP
Jack Nicholson

Highlight
The brilliant final courtroom standoff between Cruise and Nicholson.

Lowlight
This movie is fantastic, but if I have to pick one it's an underwhelming Demi Moore performance. 

Most memorable line
You already know, so I won't bother writing it down.

Rewatchable?
Absolutely! One of the most rewatchable films of all time!

Review

You can't handle the truth: A Few Good Men is the best courtroom drama ever made, and it's not even close. Aaron Sorkin's killer script has surely inspired more than one person to attend law school in hopes of delivering powerful opening statements and brutal cross-examinations. 

Tom Cruise stars as Lieutenant Kaffee, a young, arrogant lawyer who is known for settling cases without ever going to trial. He is assigned to defend two men who accidentally caused the death of another soldier. Cruise's co-stars include Demi Moore as his co-counsel, Kevin Bacon as the prosecutor, and Jack Nicholson in his Oscar-nominated role as Colonel Jessup.  Cruise’s character, Kaffee, is assigned to defend two soldiers accused of murdering one of their own. Through the course of the film, Kaffee delves into the cloudy morality of military discipline and honor that culminates in an epic showdown between two powerhouse actors—Cruise and Nicholson. 

What makes A Few Good Men stand out among other courtroom dramas is how smart it is. Sorkin flexes his screenwriting skills by using a precise script to draw you into every scene. To have no slow moments in a two-and-a-half-hour film is beyond impressive. Rob Reiner's directing should not be ignored either. In the climactic final showdown between Kaffee and Jessup, the camera starts with wide shots and by the end is right in Nicholson's face as Cruise's character closes in on what he wants. The film is gripping from start to finish.

Although Cruise is entering the height of his powers at the time of this film—he would follow this with a legendary run of The Firm, Mission: Impossible, and Jerry Maguire—Nicholson steals the show. He's only in four scenes and spends very little time on screen, but he gives what may be my favorite Nicholson performance ever. Nicholson is at his best when his powerful presence commands your attention. If it weren't for Unforgiven sweeping the Oscars that year, Nicholson would have surely scored his fourth acting Academy Award. Still, Nicholson comes out on top as his performance is still as compelling as it was nearly thirty years ago.

It's hard to pick nits with this movie. As with most legal thrillers, there are a fair amount of errors in this film when it comes to procedural accuracy. Sorkin manages to get a lot of the courtroom stuff right, but a perfectly accurate trial is rarely interesting. My pet peeve is the testifying the movie attorneys do while examining the witnesses—there’s plenty of that in this film. Still, even if not everything is completely realistic, it makes for great drama. 

At the heart of this film is a fascinating tension. On the one hand, it is clear that the brutal punishment imposed on the weak by Jessup and his men is wrong and goes too far. But Jessup's climactic speech gives us civilians insight into what is required to protect our country—unflinching obedience and perfect discipline. Do national security threats justify actions that would normally be considered despicable? Should we suspend the usual standards of decency and morality when they appear to hinder our ability to train those who protect our country? Do we, as Nicholson’s character exclaims, need men like him on that wall despite our concerns?

Seeing a legend in Nicholson and the then-rising star in Cruise go up against each other is why I love movies. A Few Good Men hopefully doesn't describe the total number of decent people there are in the legal profession. It did, however, set an impossibly high standard for all the lawyer movies that followed.

CJH