08/22/97
MOVIE REVIEW: G.I. Jane
'G.I. Jane' gets the SEAL of approval

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

**** (out of five)
Starring Demi Moore, Viggo Mortensen, Anne Bancroft, Jason Beghe, Daniel Von Bargen. A Hollywood Pictures release written by David Twohy, directed by Ridley Scott. Rated R, contains violence, profanity, nudity. Running time: 124 minutes.

Demi Moore, the high-priced actress in desperate need of a hit after several box-office disappointments, roars back to the screen in a crew cut in the action-packed crowd pleaser G.I. Jane.

Moore plays a smart and ambitious Navy Intelligence officer, Lt. Jordan O'Neil, who is prodded by a female senator from Texas to become the first woman in combat training for the Navy SEALs. The senator, played with waspish venom by Anne Bancroft in a creek-bottom accent, hopes to win votes by pushing for women as equals in military combat (although I'm not sure that idea would win her votes anywhere in real life).

Despite its breezy title, G.I. Jane is not at all like the Goldie Hawn comedy Private Benjamin from 1980, the previous women-in-the-military box-office hit. Think of G.I. Jane, whose original title was the ho-hum In Pursuit of Honor, as a sort of feminist take on An Officer and a Gentleman and you'll have a better idea of what's in store.

Actually, there's lots more action in G.I. Jane than there was in the male-dominated Officer, because it was directed by Ridley Scott, who goes for thrills with a feminine bent. Alien with Sigourney Weaver and Thelma & Louise are his films. So is Blade Runner. G.I. Jane shares Alien's dark, sometimes industrial strength look. Check out the many eerie nighttime basic training maneuvers in mud and drenching rain and especially the sequences where O'Neil works out to hone her razor-sharp muscles in a steely gray storeroom.

She needs them for this tough movie in which O'Neil goes head to head -- and later in the film quite literally head to head -- against the tight-lipped Master Chief John Urgayle (Viggo Mortensen), a drill instructor who doesn't cotton to the idea of women in combat. He wants to preserve his all-male bastion and pushes O'Neil hard -- real hard -- through basic training, hoping she'll be the one who rings the big bell outside the barracks signaling that she's quitting the program. Master Chief, for that's what he's called, says his goal is always to get one quitter on the first day of basic training.

It's not an easy course. The SEALs recruits do pushups in the surf at the Florida boot camp, leg lifts in the surf. They get run over by caissons. They run for miles in the pouring rain, face flame throwers and rifle fire, fight for every scrap of food in a frenzied noon meal escapade only to later pick the leftovers out of garbage cans for supper. In G.I. Jane's most numbing sequence, the recruits find themselves in a real-looking, sadistic prisoner-of-war maneuver complete with brutal body blows. It's the kind of gung-ho, nightmarish stuff that will make teenage boys go ga-ga.

The more Master Chief rips into O'Neil, the more she digs in. She sees this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and career move, not as "some poster girl for women's rights." She just wants what she considers to be rightfully hers. So she hunkers down, asking for no special treatment, eventually demanding that she be placed in the same barracks as the men and be forced to pull a load equal to theirs. In what will probably be the movie's most discussed scene, she takes a barber's clippers and shaves her hair off.

All this is played in the trenches with O'Neil and her male comrades (if that's a term for a bunch of guys who hate her), as constant tension. They feel threatened by her presence in the first place, so you can imagine what happens when she tries to move in with them.

David Twohy's script for G.I. Jane is more layered and interesting than just the basic training rough stuff we've gotten before and O'Neil's fight to prove herself. It takes off on a couple of surprise tangents when O'Neil discovers that she has more people in high places hoping for her failure than she had originally imagined. It all leads to a slightly corny, if satisfying, Hollywoodish payoff to the action.

Better is the support throughout the film -- reluctant at first; later genuine -- that she gets from her boyfriend (Jason Beghe), whose Pentagon insider information proves invaluable in helping her battle her foes. Small-minded and unlikable in early scenes, he does an about-face to become a behind-the-scenes partner who rallies to O'Neil's cause against her adversaries. One of those is played by Daniel Von Bargen, once of Trinity Rep, brittle as the Secretary of the Navy who is pushing for O'Neil to fail.

Moore plays O'Neil with steely determination. But she's a sympathetic character, the underdog up against a couple of hundred years of tradition. You like her strength and drive as she stands up for her rights. All she wants is a chance to prove she's as good as the men. With Moore's chiseled body and can-do attitude, last shown to such good advantage in the military film A Few Good Men, she seems equal to the task. But there's also the human side, the woman who is distressed when a long-term relationship begins to fall apart because she follows her dream. This is a solid, multi-dimensional character that Moore makes poignant.

Mortensen is a strong adversary as the stone-faced, but not entirely inhuman, Master Chief who wants her to fail, but discovers later that he needs her in a crisis. He wears the crease of a sneer, which makes him chillingly cruel, the recruits' worst nightmare. In the most uncomfortable scene, he confronts O'Neil in the shower room where she's most vulnerable. But he has respect for true ability and in the end that pays off.