Monthly Film Review, Feb '26: A Few Good Men (1992)

For a movie about a "Code Red", which is basically the military’s terrifying way of saying "discipline your teammates through violence", A Few Good Men is a film way funnier than it has any right to be. It’s a courtroom drama that moves with a sharp, rhythmic energy, and honestly, that snappy wit is what keeps it from feeling like a dry legal lecture. It’s easy to see how this movie launched a thousand copycats; without Kaffee and Jessep, we probably never would have had JAG or NCIS.

The film doesn't bother with long backstories, and instead introduces its characters as walking, talking ideas. You’ve got Tom Cruise’s Daniel Kaffee, the "spoiled child" who represents a public that’s never seen a front line and would much rather settle things with a quiet plea bargain in a hallway than deal with a messy trial. Then there’s Demi Moore’s JoAnne Galloway, who stands in for the Law and the pure ideal of equality. She’s the moral compass, yet she’s constantly pushed aside by the brass' "boys' club" and has to sit through blatant harassment and dismissiveness from the higher-ups, representing the institutional disdain for women in power. Looming over it all is Jack Nicholson’s Colonel Jessep, the nasty personification of the old institutes and of "Necessary Violence." He’s the man who believes rules are sometimes just obstacles for the people on the front lines that actually do the work required to keep everyone safe.

Movie poster

While treating characters as symbols keeps the plot moving fast, it’s a bit of a double-edged sword: Since the only things we learn about the characters are those absolutely essential for the plot, their motives and their roles in the crime, we don't really get to know them as people. This is especially true for the two defendants, Dawson and Downey. They have almost no personality beyond "following orders," which is a shame. If we were given a chance to learn a bit more about them as people the point the movie makes might've hit harder.

One of the best moves the movie makes, though, is skipping the romance. There’s a tiny bit of "will-they-won’t-they" between Kaffee and Galloway, including a date, but Rob Reiner wisely stayed away from a love story. Galloway already spends the movie being humiliated by Jessep and others for being a woman, making her into a romantic prize would have totally ruined her struggle for professional respect and made the her character feel much smaller.

That said, the ending is where the Hollywood polish gets a bit too much. It’s all a little too perfect: the bad guys get punished, the good guys win, and it’s wrapped up in a neat, "Happy Patriotic American" bow. It’s so tidy you almost expect the lawyers to salute the flag and then turn to the camera and, almost tearfully, shout a confident "God bless America!" as the credits are about to roll.

As someone who lives in a country where military service is a normal part of life and conflict isn't just something on the news but something happening a couple of miles away from home, the "Jesopian" worldview hits a little different. I know firsthand how messy and arbitrary military codes and their enforcement can be, and I wonder how people in the US or Europe, where the front lines are often so far away they are almost abstract concepts, really experience this. To them, the debate about "the guardians on the wall" is a philosophical argument; to those of us who were those "men on the wall" the movie feels like a very shiny, very sanitized version of a much more complicated reality.