G.I. Jane (1997)
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G.I. Jane Movie Review
G.I. Jane is a 1997 action drama film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Demi Moore. It’s a very corny, but entertaining flick.
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“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
A bird will fall frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself“
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Lt. Jordan joins the US Navy Special Warfare Group and struggles to prove her worth in a unit dominated by men. This movie was a box office bomb and yet another nineties Scott movie that failed miserably on all fronts. He really had a bad streak back in that decade. But the movie ain’t all that bad to be honest. It’s a perfectly serviceable military romp.
Demi Moore got a Razzie Award for this role, which just goes to show how ludicrous these awards have always been. She’s not bad at all. In fact, she’s very good and surprisingly believable as this tough female soldier. I liked her look and I found her acting here to be solid and she obviously committed to her character a lot, so she should get extra props for that.
The group of soldiers is underdeveloped, though as a group they worked. Viggo Mortensen was quite memorable in the only important supporting role, but Anne Bancroft got to play this ridiculously written villain role that simply did not work. There is a lot of American militarism in this film, but we’ve seen this type of movie many times before and after this one, so the criticism directed toward this one was a bit too harsh.
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G.I. Jane is an okay movie because it serves as fun entertainment. It’s very engaging throughout and surprisingly sympathetic in its characters and even charming at times. But it also has so many bad things going against it. The script is quite mediocre. The action scenes are overwhelming. The cinematography is too dark and the movie has that 90s aesthetic that I simply never gravitated toward. The score is sweet, but overly manipulative. And the worst offender is its corny nature as the movie is cheesy in dialogue, ridiculous in some of its characters and contrived in its third act. It’s a dumb blockbuster that had good, ahead of its time intensions.
I’d expected terrible things going into G.I. Jane, but the movie ended up being serviceable. Demi Moore got the Razzie for this role, but she didn’t deserve it as she was pretty good and surprisingly believable in it. The movie is genuinely entertaining throughout in spite of many things going against it – the cinematography is weak, the score is overwrought, some characters are ridiculous, the dialogue is very corny and the third act is quite contrived. It is riddled with flaws for sure, but it’s fun and enjoyable enough, so it’s far from terrible in my book.
My Rating – 3
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