Sloppy but good-hearted movie

Rating: 6/10 (8 September 1999)

(Minor spoilers).
G.I. JANE is the story of Jordan O'Neil (Demi Moore), who is selected to become the first woman to undertake combat training with the Navy SEALs. It is intended that, if she is successful, Congress will debate opening combat roles in the military to women. O'Neil must face the hellish rigors of the training, administered harshly and meticulously by master Chief Urgayle (Viggo Mortensen), as well as overcoming the hostility and uncooperativeness of her fellow trainees, and the political machinations of the Senator who selected her.
The plot of G.I. JANE is a lamentable mess. At one point, O'Neil takes the irrevocable step of resigning from the program, only to promptly be let back in and allowed to continue. What? The sequences of the SERE island training are simply absurd; no trainees could take that amount of punishment without being hospitalized for weeks with multiple fractures. And there is the oh-so-predictable, oh-so-stupid gimmick of dropping the trainees into actual combat at the end.
There is also the question of the realism of O'Neil's success. I will not deny that there are women who could make it through combat training; it's been done, in other countries and times. But it's a fact that such women are very rare exceptions to the rule. And G.I. JANE makes it quite clear that Senator DeHaven has passed over the best-qualified female candidates and selected O'Neil, a comm officer, principally for her appearance rather than her physical abilities. I just can't believe that any woman less than the very best in the field could pass SEAL training, when the program eliminates nearly half of the men who take it on.
But G.I. JANE recovers in heart what it lacks in brains. O'Neil's determination to be treated as an equal, even when that treatment isn't nice, is laudable. The symbol of this attitude, of course, is how she shaves her head. But it is present everywhere else in the movie; she refuses special privileges, objects to an aide in the obstacle course, and even sleeps in the men's barracks. In a world where whiny feminists use unequal treatment as an excuse and a crutch to be discarded when no longer convenient, O'Neil insists on truly equal treatment, and I have to admire her for it.
However, the movie's treatment of the issues surrounding women in the military is very simplistic and deceptive. At one point, when Urgayle points out that men will unreasonably endanger themselves to save women in combat, thus risking their units, O'Neil dismissively responds that if you save a man, you're a hero, but if you save a woman, you're taking an unjustified risk. This is not true, as those who've seen SAVING PRIVATE RYAN or FULL METAL JACKET should realize; both movies show how soldiers are sometimes forced to let a sniper's victim die alone because going out to rescue him will merely get other men shot too. I'm not saying the problem is insoluble; after all, much of military discipline consists of training people to ignore such natural instincts as running like hell. But complex problems such as Urgayle raises will not go away merely because they are ignored. At the same time, the movie ignores what I always felt was the strongest argument in favor of women in combat: the historical instances where women fought successfully on the winning side in World War II, Vietnam, and the Israeli revolution, among others.
Demi Moore will never be a great actress, but she successfully shows O'Neil's fiery determination. Viggo Mortensen does a virtuoso job as Urgayle, though the ambiguous writing of his part makes it seem sometimes that he is playing two different men. Mortensen is one of the few actors who can play nearly any role he is handed; what two more different characters can you imagine than Urgayle in this movie and Weps in CRIMSON TIDE? Anne Bancroft is so good at impersonating ex-Texas governor Ann Richards that I didn't mind the fact that her part was a laughable stick-figure villain. Trevor Jones' suspense-building score is the only thing that makes the last scenes bearable.
G.I. JANE is entertaining, and it at least tries to put out serious thoughts for consideration, even if it isn't very good at it. Give it a look sometime.
Rating: **1/2 out of ****.