...the more I find myself sympathizing with the Nicholson character. Americans really don't understand what it takes to protect this lavish lifestyle we lead (even poor people like me have it better than, I'm guessing, 90% of the rest of the world). We're spoiled and we don't understand the hostility the armed forces keep at bay.
And let's be honest, Tom Cruise's character is a smug little twerp who probably needs a Marine to knock that smug right off his face!
It should be obvious to anybody with a functioning brain that this is Rob Reiner's left wing view of America. Excessively politically correct and negative.
The film was made in peace time right after the fall of the Berlin wall so there is this superficial view towards the military. I'm sure Reiner was thinking the military should be some social club to help minorities get ahead.
The smart guy is black. The slow guy is white and the victim is Hispanic. Of course the bad guy is a right wing reactionary white guy.
Amazing that such an easily predictable film is liked by so many but these are likely the same people who cry during the Green mile.
"people who cry during the Green mile"
Yeah, I never got that. Those guys were killers, and earned their seat in the chair. Just because the guy has a pet rat or something, so what? The one movie reaction I can think of that is even worse is people crying over "Dead Man Walking". F'ing white trash psychopath rapes, tortures, and murders, and I'm supposed to align myself with this demented nun who is so concerned with him but couldn't care less about the victims' families? Too bad lunatic leftists get to make most of the movies.
The smart guy is black. The slow guy is white and the victim is Hispanic. Of course the bad guy is a right wing reactionary white guy.
ooh , you dug up some woke from 30 years ago
no reason for amercians to occupy cuba
share"no reason for amercians to occupy cuba"
I guess it's news to you buddy: they don't.
Americans don't occupy Cuba. Gitmo is a naval base that is 45 squares miles. The bases sets on leased property. The military is not allowed outside of the base as described in the film.
shareColonel Jessup is completely unsympathetic to anyone with even a little bit of common sense or humanity. He ordered the men under his command to illegally discipline one of their own, threw his obedient soldiers under the bus when things went wrong, lied to the people investigating his crimes and then had official records altered to cover his ass.
It is obvious to the most casual observer that Jesop was unfit to command and finally got what was coming to him.
Ranab, I agree. Nicholson's character had a guy murdered. He is not sympathetic. And this is coming from a conservative republican who supported the Iraq War.
shareAlso agree.
OP and the ppl who agree with them are just edgelords. They caught the whiff of a reactionary perspective and think they're so learned.
The reality is, Jessup did have some good points. Yeah Kaffee is just a pretty boy in a suit. He doesn't know what Jessup knows, and he doesn't know what it's like to stand on that wall. Most likely, Kaffee cannot make the hard decisions that a man like Jessup needs to.
But yeah, Jessup is still a rotten person and did some really bad things. And he got arrested for them. This is just a testament to quality character writing.
The reality is, Jessup did have some good points
I replied to your comment below. Thanks for the ping.
Example: I thought what Cpl. Motari did was absolutely shitty (tossing the puppy), but again, we expect him to kill for us. Can we honestly, reasonably, not expect a little cruelty to leak into that mindset?
While it was kind of a dick move to blame Dawson and Downey for it I totally understand where Jessup is coming from. He made huge sacrifices and puts his life on the line every day to keep America safe and in return he has people like Kaffee who has no clue what it’s like judging him and attacking the way he does it.
shareJessup sacrificed his own men and his integrity to get where he was. But I'm sure it pissed him right off that a Ltjg weasel like Kaffee brought him down. :)
shareI agree. His methods were wrong and he had become corrupt, but his philosophy, ethics and worldview were spot on.
Come for the Kaffee, stay for the Jessup. Millennials and Gen Z femboys have much to learn from him.
Hard to believe Reiner could direct such a nuanced masterpiece, and then make the crude Leftist propaganda that is Ghosts of Mississippi.
And that’s what makes a good villain, one with understandable motivations, you see where they are coming from even though their actions and methods make them bastards.
shareJessup's "ethics" included unlawful orders to his men, stabbing his men in the back and lying. His philosophy included doing anything to advance his career.
shareThose were foolish acts of expediency and led to his downfall, they were examples of him betraying his ideals, not practising them.
shareJessup legitimately did want to defend America, he was willing to step over lines however that made him immoral. He had noble intentions but he did immoral things to achieve them.
shareI don't recall a single line from the film that shows Jessup actually wanted to defend America. He seemed more interested in advancing his career so he could get sexual favors from higher ranking women as he advanced.
share“We’re in the business of saving lives”
“You fucking people don’t know how to defend a nation”
So there was no irony in the fact that he abandoned one of his soldiers to illegal discipline that either resulted in his death or he was overly eager to at least blame the death on his junior soldiers instead of taking responsibility for it himself?
It was only at the end when Ltjg Kaffee trapped him in a lie that he came clean
It seems Col Jessup was more in the business of watching his star rise.
Yes, he felt cutting Dawson and Downey loose would be better for the country l
shareI don’t. Jessep was not making the U.S. safer.
He disobeyed orders and ordered a code red at Santiago. And why? To cover up an illegal shooting over the fence. That illegal shooting actually risked lives as it could’ve provoked a foreign country into war.
By disobeying orders, Jessup undermined the military and put American lives in danger
I agree with Boricanator, below.
Jessup was an egotist, full of self-importance over the (admittedly vital) job he'd been tasked with.
He's like a surgeon so convinced of his own perfection that, when he kills a patient, it's the patient's fault.
We owe him respect for the job he was SUPPOSED to do, the job he AGREED to do ... but we also owe him contempt for what he DID do (order a code red then abandon his own men when it went south)
The brilliance of Nicholson's performance is that we believe Jessup. But what Jessup is doing is sneaky as hell -- he's talking the importance of the job he's SUPPOSED to do to hide the venality of the misdeeds he ALSO did.
He's like a surgeon so convinced of his own perfection that, when he kills a patient, it's the patient's fault.
Jessup is written like a Bond villain. He has arguably logical reasoning and motivations. But, then it is revealed to the audience that behind his good traits, lies an evil that makes you realize that he needs to be taken down.
The Man With The Golden Gun springs to mind, where villain Scaramanga has a plan to sell solar energy production to the world and basically bankrupt Big Oil. And then, he shows Bond his solar powered laser which disintegrates an airplane.
That's Jessup.