A greatly misunderstood movie.

Rating: 8/10 (8 May 2005)

Nearly everyone I know who likes this film says that they like but didn't quite understand it. Other people hated it and also didn't understand.
The story is pretty simple. You have Clint Eastood playing Gunnery Sgt. Tom 'Gunny' Highway (or drill Sargent for those not familiar with Marine talk). If I am not mistaken one of the other drill Sargent's is played by a real drill Sargent.
Gunny is brought in to train a group of of marines who lack a certain amount of military discipline. He quickly starts to work on them. Treating them with sadistic cruelty. But we have also see other sides of Gunny too, such as the drunken brawler who is arrested for urinated on a police car and a guy who reads women's magazines so he can get back with his ex-wife.
OK, so we know that this bunch of losers will do good in the end. The characters are both interesting but also Cyphers for a bigger message. Gunny is perhaps too much of a hard-ass, the marines shout too much (all the US Marines I have met in real life are very quietly spoken and polite...and have skinny legs...a result of the badly designed marine workout program), the Mayjor is too much of a idiot to really have been transferred from supply to commanding an active unit and so on. I also don't think a recon unit would have ever had such bad discipline, as they should be the best of the Marines.
Full of a lot of witty dialogue played with a straight face, military situation humour (such as the need of credit cards on the battle field), gay jokes (funny, but was not acceptable in the politically correct days of the 1980s, but more acceptable in the post south park era) and so on.
The message ultimately is that soldiers are not people who love war, nor is their behaviour an acceptable part of modern civilized society, but they exist to serve the greater society. There are other messages here too, but ultimately for most people these messages get lost.
Still one of my favourite movies.