Eastwood's Best

Rating: 9/10 (13 September 2002)

For me, a great movie is one that works as well, or better, on the second and subsequent viewings as on the first. Heartbreak Ridge amazed me the first time I saw it, and it just keeps getting better.

Gunny Highway is the most interesting of the many great misfit tough-guy characters Clint Eastwood has brought to the screen. Tom Highway grows and changes in the course of this film, challenging inner demons more daunting and dangerous than anything either the Cuban Army or the U.S. Naval Academy can throw at him. The viewer does not know until the end if he will master them or not -- and maybe not even then, because the character really doesn't know, either -- but he has decided to give himself wholeheartedly to the effort, just as he had done as a kid on Heartbreak Ridge. When he studies a Cosmo advice column like a captured enemy battle plan (been there, done that), I laugh to hide my tears. Even when one has seen the ending (many times), it does not lessen the suspense and anxiety that lead up to it.

I give it a 9 rather than a 10 because all the characters first appear as two-dimensional types, coming to life only as the story unfolds. Maybe this was intentional, to hasten the story. Maybe this reflects the nature of first impressions. In any case it is just a minor annoyance, one that becomes less obtrusive after the first viewing.
Entertainment, action, romance, humor, and wisdom -- Heartbreak Ridge has all the good stuff I expect from a movie. A keeper.