An Officer and a Gentleman

Another of the movies that I had the chance to DVR during one of the free preview weekends, not having blogged about it before, is An Officer and a Gentleman. It's going to be on Epix Hits tonight (Apr. 4) at 8:00 PM and again tomorrow morning at 9:10 AM, with a couple more airings at the end of the week on Epix2.

Richard Gere stars as Zack Mayo, who at the start of the movie is living in an apartment in Seattle together with his father (Robert Loggia in a small role which was apparently cut down quite a bit in editing), who has brought home another woman. We then learn about Zack's past. Zack's father was in the Navy, stationed at Subic Bay in the Philippines, leaving Zack and his mother behind. Well, at least up until Mom realized that Dad was lying to her about coming back to them, and responded by killing herself, leaving Dad as Zack's only family, and sending Zack to the Philippines where he grew up fast.

It seems like a bit of a dead-end life for Zack, who has decided he's going to do the one thing his father wouldn't want him to do, which is to try to become an officer in the Navy, specifically an aviation officer which could be a route to the lucrative job of airline pilot, if you can pass basic training and flight school and serve six years with the Navy. Dad doesn't think Zack is cut out to be an officer, not with his attitude which is part loner, part superiority complex.

But, in any case, it's the job of basic training to mold raw young, or youngish since flight school isn't supposed to attract 18-year-olds fresh out of high school, recruits into the sort of people who have the right attitude to become good officers. It they can't become officers or fit in to military discipline, the military hopes they'll DOR -- drop on request. It all starts with the drill instructor, Marine Gunnery Sgt. Foley (Louis Gossett Jr.).

Foley immediately sets out to belittle every one of his new recruits, not out of meanness, but as a way of smacking any overconfidence out of them. Some of it is also with the better reason of the recruits' lives possibly depending on the things they learn, such as hand-to-hand combat if they have to ditch behind enemy lines. But all that comes later. First up is giving the recruits the military hairdo and assigning them rooms together. Mayo gets put in a room with three others, most notably Sid Worley (David Keith), who becomes a sourt of best friend to Zack. There's also one woman in this class of recruits, Casey Seeger (Lisa Eilbacher), whom Foley is clearly worried about making the grade since technically the military isn't supposed to be making allowances for women.

There is one area, however, in which Foley is absolutely not going to have to make an allowance for women. Near a naval air station like this, especially one that's setting out to produce officers, there are women who set out to get themselves a good catch in the form of a military officer. They'll resort to all sorts of means, up to getting themselves pregnant, in order to get their man. Obviously Seeger doesn't have to worry about that, but men like Zack and Sid do.

And, unsurprisingly, two young woman fairly quickly show up at one of the dances the military holds. Paula Pokrifki (Debra Winger) and Lynette Pomeroy (Lisa Blount) are good friends who work together at the paper factory nearby, and with Zack and Sid being friends too, it's a fairly obvious foursome, especially when you consider that everybody is young, nubile, and full of raging hormones. Paula and Zack pair up, as do Sid and Lynette.

But a relationship between Zack and Paula is going to be tough. Zack isn't so sure he wants a relationship -- remember that loner stuff -- and Paula's family is none too happy with the idea either. We eventually learn that Paula's mother got pregnant courtesy of an earlier generation of officer candidate, who didn't want to marry her. No wonder Paula's stepfather resents Zack.

And that loner stuff makes Mayo, in Foley's eyes, spectacularly unsuited to being an officer. So after one fairly egregious rules violation, Foley decides he's going to try to break Mayo to the point that Mayo will DOR, as opposed to having to be expelled, which would cause a lot more problems for everybody. Mayo does break, but refuses to DOR, leading to Foley finally gaining a modicum of respect for Mayo.

But there's still several weeks of officer training to go, and a ways to go in the romantic relationships, which may or may not work out when Lynette intimates that she's missed her period.

In some ways, An Officer and a Gentleman treads familiar ground, as trying to fit in to military discipline in boot camp is a theme in any number of military-set movies, be it the Jack Webb movie The D.I. or Montgomery Clift in The Young Lions. But with the destruction of the Production Code, the script here could deal with more mature themes like women off-base getting pregnant by one of the recruits, along with more graphic washing out. That works to the movie's benefit.

But still, a movie like An Officer and a Gentleman is always going to come down to the strength of the performances, and those are uniformly good. Gossett, of course, won the Oscar, but even Gere, who I wouldn't consider the most dynamic actor out there, does a fine job.

It's been almost 40 years since the release of An Officer and a Gentleman, so I would assume there's a reasonable number of people who haven't seen it. If you get the chance, definitely watch it.