Dress Right! Well -- Okay, Left.

Rating: 5/10 (27 May 2011)

Clint made this during a sort of transitional stage, between movies that (had he not made them) would have gone straight to a drive-in movie and those that provoke thoughts running slightly deeper than how to keep your orang-utan amused.
In "Heartbreak Ridge," Clint is the gravel-voiced, much-decorated, combat-experience Marine Gunnery Sergeant whose new job is to snap a reconnaissance platoon out of the self-indulgent, rebellious indolence into which its been allowed to lapse. Nobody who hasn't been through what Clint's character has been through can understand him. His officers are morons -- one sadistic goon from "supply" and a mousy new lieutenant who brags about his ROTC in college. It take the whole movie for Clint to show them how the cow ate the cabbage. The plot is positively hoary. Patton had the same job. So did Gregory Peck in "Twelve O'Clock High" and John Wayne in too many movies to list. It's always enjoyable to see a rough, tough man's man walk into his new command and rip everybody a new one.
It's kind of amusing too in its own flamboyantly retrograde way. You ought to hear Gunny insult his men by calling them "ladies" and muttering that, though he may have just done them a favor, that doesn't mean they're going to swap spit in the shower.
There's a bit of combat at the end, in Granada, which we invaded in order to save the sons and daughters of wealthy Americans attending an offshore medical school in St. George. Not to worry though. One man is killed but he's quickly brushed over. And the men go into battle with bullets zinging around them while exchanging the usual wisecracks and sometimes whooping with joy. It's not meant to be a serious depiction of life in the Marine Corps -- I hope -- but rather a cassation that reassures and numbs the mind at the same time. It would have gone over quite well with the teens at the drive-in. They could have rolled around in the back seats and fogged up the windows while Clint and his wife, Marsha Mason, had the kinds of arguments about family versus job that John Wayne suffered through so often.
It was shot at Camp Pendleton in California and in Puerto Rico. It's almost an insult to the Marine Corps. The men in the platoon have let their hair grow out and some wear earrings. They dress and act like slobs. They openly insult their sergeant, who is a Medal of Honor winner, and threaten to do him physical injury. It was tougher than that in the Coast Guard. I mean it. Sure, in boot camp the Swedish maids were young, radiant, and eager to please but the Swedish language does not have a word for "medium rare" so we had breakfast in bed with steaks that were invariably overdone. On the other hand I taught night school for some years at Camp Lejeune and the students, admittedly a select group, were as sharp and responsible as any that I've taught anywhere, and smarter than most. The Marines I knew would have looked at this the way you and I might look at "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Kind of amusing but in no way meant as more than a cartoon fantasy.