'A Few Good Men' turns 30 and we still can’t handle the truth

Tom Cruise in a still from 'A Few Good Men' (1992).

In 2007, I found myself in a study room with a classmate from business school at the end of a particularly exhausting week. We were working on an assignment when one of us happened to say something along the lines of “handling the truth” and the next thing you know, we had spent 20 minutes re-enacting the entire climax — not just the main Kafee-Jessup showdown but even the interjections from relatively minor characters like opposing counsel Ross and Judge Randolph. It was the most animated we had been all week. That’s the power of Aaron Sorkin’s crackling dialogue.

Jack Nicholson in a film still.

A Few Good Men was released on December 9, 1992. The film, directed by Rob Reiner, was an adaptation of the play of the same name also written by Aaron Sorkin. Starring Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore, and a murderer's row of recognisable character actors, the movie was nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Picture. It was also a huge commercial success, making over $240 million on a budget of $40 million.

The idea came about when Sorkin's sister told him about a hazing case she was working on for the Navy. At the time, he was working as a bartender, and wrote scenes for the play on paper napkins at the bar transcribing them into his computer when he went back home each night. The title came from a recruiting campaign for the United States Marine Corps, “We’re looking for a few good men.”

Cruise was one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood in 1992 (not much has changed), coming off an Oscar nomination for Born on the Fourth of July and following up with the megahit John Grisham adaptation The Firm (1991). This is Cruise’s second role as an officer in the Navy after Top Gun’s (1986) Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell. Curiously enough, both characters are made fun of for being uncomfortable in boats despite being Naval officers.

There’s nothing I can say that hasn’t already been said about the movie, Sorkin’s dialogue, Nicholson’s Oscar-nominated performance, etc. But it’s an interesting exercise to re-watch A Few Good Men in 2022 and see how it plays — given the times we live in, and the social and moral awareness we expect our art to reflect.

The script and direction studiously avoid any racial discussion. Reiner takes care to pepper the cast with black actors — the main accused Dawson, the judge, Luther from the newsstand, a healthy number of the jury, and even one of the non-testifying Airmen at the end. The script also curiously leaves out the victim Santiago's Hispanic family. The plot moves fast enough that you don't really question this until after. But a viewer today is more keenly tuned in to these kinds of dynamics.

The thing that really sticks out is the casual misogyny towards Moore's Galloway, both from the ostensible good guys as well as the script itself. It's one thing for Jessup's villain to engage in what is practically sexual harassment, but it's telling that even our white knight Kaffee drops some misogynistic gems of his own in the guise of banter. Sorkin, an avowed admirer of screwball rom-coms from the '30s and '40s like Bringing Up Baby (1938) and His Girl Friday (1940), tries to transplant that back-and-forth style here but it seems stilted, and simply does not age well. To his credit, Sorkin pushed back against studio notes that asked for a romantic entanglement between the two leads. However, his script does Galloway no favours, saddling her with the only instance of lawyerly incompetence in the movie.

Demi Moore (centre) in a still from the film.

From a character standpoint, the 2022 version of the movie would flesh out Jessup's character a bit more than the two-dimensional characterisation we get here. A Jessup who believes so strongly in his leadership style and Code Reds, would not be so willing to let his soldiers be punished for following his orders. That internal conflict between self-preservation and standing up for his principles would make for a much more interesting character. Looking at Kaffee’s character from a 2022 lens, it’s possible that there’s a bit more than meets the eye. He doesn’t have any girlfriends, is uninterested in the smart and attractive Jo Galloway, and his home doesn’t look like a frat boy’s pad. Was he unintentionally coded as gay?

A Few Good Men was among the first few stories that Sorkin wrote, and die-hard fans will be able to trace the genesis of various Sorkinisms — both in dialogue and tropes — that he likes to reuse. Sorkin is surprisingly self-aware of some of his tics; a late scene in the movie has Kaffee making fun of Galloway for reciting her résumé to him, a Sorkinism that appears in his work even today.

Three decades have passed, and Sorkin has been on a meteoric rise in Hollywood. He’s had tremendous success in television with The West Wing (1999) and The Newsroom (2012). He won an Oscar for adapting The Social Network’s (2010) screenplay and has since turned to directing. Unfortunately, his writing has suffered along the way — his villains have become more cartoonish and his protagonists even more idealistic. In the final reckoning, A Few Good Men is easily the best of all his work. Actors at their peak met Sorkin’s words at their peak and magic was created.