Disposable star vehicle-cum-recruitment poster

Rating: 4/10 (25 September 2011)

Gunnery Sergeant Highway (Clint Eastwood, with a bristly crew-cut and an even bristlier voice)--a decorated career Marine with the usual personal problems--takes on a raw bunch of recruits (real "fire-pissers"), training them for battle and eventually invading Grenada. Highway snarls at this goof-off platoon, "The Marines are looking for a few good men, and you guys ain't it!" If this doesn't sound familiar, it's because you haven't seen many movies. Poorly-written, badly-edited, overlong macho-drama from director and star Eastwood, the cinematic equivalent of a paperweight: it keeps a solid cast bolted to the ground without so much as one genuine emotion to give the picture lift-off. Profanities are slung about, mostly used for comic relief, and yet the constant insults--and gay slurs--are ugly and depressing...and rather curious in a movie so filled with bare-chested rabble rousing. Marsha Mason was a good choice to play Eastwood's ex-wife, but her role (as scripted) is ridiculous, and the halfhearted send-off the picture gives these squabbling lovebirds fizzles out like a dud grenade. *1/2 from ****