An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)
Directed by Taylor Hackford
Zack Mayo is an aloof, taciturn man who aspires to be a navy pilot. Once he arrives at training camp for his 13-week officer's course, Mayo runs afoul of abrasive, no-nonsense drill Sergeant Emil Foley. Mayo is an excellent cadet, but a little cold around the heart, so Foley rides him mercilessly, sensing that the young man would be prime officer material if he weren't so self-involved. Zack's affair with a working girl is likewise compromised by his unwillingness to give of himself.
12 connections found
View:
12 connections, in both directions
What critics compared An Officer and a Gentleman to
Yet pictures like Evita and Moulin Rouge almost seem like appetizers when compared to Chicago, a knockout of a musical that, among other achievements, finds Catherine Zeta-Jones in her best screen work to date, Richard Gere delivering his finest effort since An Officer and a Gentleman, and Renee Zellweger adding to her then-noteworthy string of unassailable performances.
He recalls it as a combination of An Officer and a Gentleman and Saturday Night Fever.
Even more than Flyboys, though, this resembles An Officer and a Gentleman, right down to the scene where our handsome hero bursts into his girlfriend's place of employment to declare his everlasting love (sign of the times: Instead of the Oscar-winning "Up Where We Belong," the soundtrack swells with a treacly Bryan Adams tune).
As with Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman , Donut -- his nickname -- has nowhere else to go.
Advertisement
This is part of a hallowed tradition in movies: It’s the drill sergeant and the raw recruit, as in An Officer and a Gentleman ; it’s Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke in Training Day .
Its like a jazz version of the very good inside-classical-music drama Mr. Hollands Opus crossed with a drill-sergeant-from-hell classic like An Officer and a Gentleman, with Simmons in the Lou Gossett Jr. role.
Even the legendary sex scenes in “An Officer and a Gentleman” are calculated and stuffy.
But he doesn't play it like a lord and master, and if you think of other Marine sergeants -- John Wayne in "Iwo Jima," R. Lee Ermey in "Jacket," Louis Gossett Jr. in "An Officer and a Gentleman" -- Foxx's Sykes will surprise you.
The next segment of the film could be called the "An Officer and a Gentleman piece".
Advertisement
In the Eastwood version, Kyle gets his basic training on the cheap, in scenes cribbed from An Officer and a Gentleman.
Hackford, having directed movies like An Officer And A Gentleman, Dolores Claiborne, and The Devil's Advocate , turns out another richly textured film, gripping, suspenseful, and brimming with good performances not only by Crowe, but by Meg Ryan, David Morse, and David Caruso, among others.
Director Taylor Hackford, responsible for overrated crowd-pleasers like An Officer and a Gentleman and Devil's Advocate as well as underrated dramas like Dolores Claiborne and Everybody's All-American, does a creditable job of infusing a talky script with thrills until the denouement.