Should Woman be on the Front Line?

Rating: 7/10 (3 March 2012)

The first thing that I heard about this movie was that the US Navy was opposed to making it and was very resistant to allowing Scott to use any of their facilities. I don't know what happened in the end but they seemed to be using some pretty hi-tech weaponry. One just doesn't walk down to a corner store and buy an Apache, though I thought the Apache was being used very ineffectively in the situation. Basically the Navy Seals were being pursued by a Lybian border patrol and they were on foot, so the Apache was firing missiles. I would have used the chain gun because it is much more effective against infantry than missiles, missiles are for tanks and other vehicles.
G.I. Jane is a protest movie and it is about women in the military in front line jobs. The Navy Seals are said to be the best of the front line troops and thus we focus on this. The movie is much more political and deals a lot with the political ramifications of what is going on. The biggest protest here is that nobody wants to bring women home in body bags. What the women say is that they can do anything that a man can do, so if a man can be a front line soldier, then a woman should be as well. Starship Troopers actually has women as front line soldiers. We see the main character wanting to be treated like all the other men, but at first she is given help because they feel that she needs it. What she doesn't want is to be treated any differently. The is opposition to what she is doing but it doesn't come out as strong as it did in the previews. In the previews we are led to believe that everywhere she goes she faces opposition, but this is not true. People do try to persuade her from doing it, but she is stubborn and continues.
It is the political side of the movie that draws the criticism. The politicians say that they don't want women coming home in body bags. The whole idea is about change and people don't want to do it. Feminisim is a very strong force in today's society and now we are moving further into what originally were male only jobs. Today we see women weightlifters and labourers, but we still don't see women soldiers. In Australia we have women on the naval ships but not in infantry. Now, in this movie, we see the beginnings of a protest against this.
The movie itself was a little confusing at times because the characters seem to mumble and it was hard to concentrate with Louisa and Melissa doing their usual girly things behind me, but that was not Ridley Scott's fault. His dark, wet style is very evident here, though it is quite different to Burton's style. Scott focuses more on this protest, and his darkness is much more realistic. Scott seems to keep the movie dark as a symbol of this world where women are not free to do what they like. Scott also seems to like rain because it is raining a lot in this movie. This seems to symbolise the struggle that the soldiers are going through in the training.
The training is very hard, and Scott reminds us of this constantly. They eat from bins and go through training to handle torture and capture. They are beaten up, drowned, and pushed to the limit. They say that there is a 60% dropout rate, and most of them want Jane to do it, but she doesn't. She makes it through a large part of the course only to become a political embarrassment.