G.I. JANE (Hollywood) Starring: Demi Moore, Viggo Mortensen, Anne Bancroft. Screenplay: Danielle Alexandra and David Twohy. Producers: Ridley Scott, Demi Moore, Roger Birnbaum and Suzanne Todd. Director: Ridley Scott. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, adult themes, violence) Running Time: 125 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
A certain reactionary element has already decided, sight unseen, that G.I. JANE must be a piece of hardcore feminist propaganda. After all, here's the film-maker behind THELMA & LOUISE directing the story of a female naval lieutenant named Jordan O'Neil (Demi Moore) who tries to break into the heretofore all-male Navy SEALs. Imagine their chagrin when they realize that Ridley Scott has pulled a fast one on them. G.I. JANE is actually a gruntin', sweatin', shootin' and fightin' guy movie with a message as politically incorrect as they come. Anyone who goes to G.I. JANE expecting to cheer for a woman succeeding in a male dominated environment on her own terms is in for a rude awakening. This is the story of a woman who succeeds in a male dominated environment by turning into a man.
No, I'm not referring to Ms. Moore's much-publicized shaven pate, nor to the cigar-smoking, take-no-b.s. real-life persona she brings to every one of her projects. Such masculinisms may not hurt G.I. JANE's he-man quotient, but they don't define it either. The pivotal transgender moment occurs two-thirds of the way through the film, as Lt. O'Neil nears the end of her SEAL training. During a war game exercise, O'Neil's team is captured and subjected to P.O.W. treatment. That treatment includes an extended sequence during which the Master Chief (Viggo Mortensen) physically and psychologically abuses O'Neil, and in fact prepares to rape her. Just when we think O'Neil is beaten, she rouses herself and -- ahem -- suggests that the Master Chief "suck my [anatomical feature usually associated with the male of the species]." Suddenly, with the rousing cheers of her comrades ringing in her ears, she is an outsider no longer. She is one of the boys, metaphorical genitalia and all, ready to trade whisky shots and lusty cries of "Hoo-yah."
It's the perfect climax to a film which continues the morphing of Ridley Scott and his brother Tony into a single two-headed film-making organism dedicated to celebrating manly men at their manliest. Ridley once had a sense of style, something Tony could never claim, but that style has all but vanished in recent duds like 1492: CONQUEST OF PARADISE and WHITE SQUALL. In G.I. JANE, Ridley spends most of the film pointing his camera at men (and Moore) straining their way through the rigors of SEAL boot camp while drill instructors shout insults at them. It's a tired device in movies about soldiers -- after FULL METAL JACKET, the initiation ritual has been done as well as anyone is ever going to do it -- which runs on and on until you may be ready yourself to ring the bell which allows the recruits to bail out. G.I. JANE is a one-note film just waiting for the inevitable moment when Lt. O'Neil makes her profane statement that the best woman for the job is a man.
I noted that that scene is the perfect climax for G.I. JANE, but in truth it only _should have been_ the climax. The film actually rambles on for another half-hour, allowing O'Neil to butt heads with a duplicitous senator (Anne Bancroft, in a wonderfully oily performance full of matter-of-fact sleaze) before butting heads with Libyan soldiers in her first real mission. That mission is necessary, of course, as a real test of O'Neil's mettle, so that she can earn the much-desired respect of the Master Chief who beat her insensible and sexually assaulted her. Sure Jordan O'Neil makes it through the program. It's the way she makes it through which could have plenty of viewers cringing. When G.I. JANE isn't monotonous or ridiculous (turning O'Neil's personal training into an excuse for sweaty T&A close-ups), it's just plain insulting. There's no danger or eroticism to the scene where the Master Chief interrupts O'Neil while she's taking a shower. After all, she doesn't have anything he hasn't seen before in the men's shower. Hoo-yah.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 SEALs of disapproval: 3.
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