SCREEN

Demi Moore's action movie buffs over the big issues

G.I. Jane

Directed by Ridley Scott
Starring Demi Moore
Now playing at Richmond Centre

Don't come to G.I. Jane expecting grand statements on women in combat from the director who made Thelma and Louise. G.I. Jane is a macho action movie, pure and simple; a Top Gun with a female character.
Buffed and steel-jawed, Demi Moore is its action hero, grunting and sweating through her Navy SEAL training with barely a word. She plays Lieut. Jordan O'Neil, recruited as a test case to become the first woman put through the abuse of SEALs training. Senator Lillian DeHaven (Anne Bancroft with a wonderful mix of Southern charm and toughness) has bullied the Navy into running the test case. Military officials expect Jordan to join the 60 per cent of men who fail, closing the issue of women in combat for good.
Moore's motivations are summed up in a sentence or two: she wants to move up the ranks of the military, and she needs "operational training" to do so. She plays her character as bulldog, and it's hard to sympathize with a bulldog - a problem that has cursed Moore throughout her career.
Director Ridley Scott approaches the film with the same bullishness. Like a Hummer in high gear, his camera motors from grueling training exercise to grueling training exercise. True, in Scott's hands, it can become a surreal ballet: helicopters swoop, recruits splash about the water in slow motion, and the sun sets over the semi-tropical coastline where they're posted. But it's all edited like a rock video.
The flashy packaging masks the fact that somewhere, someone forgot what the movie was really about. There's no time for discussion about women in combat; G.I. Jane is more interested in the details of training so sadistic, its recruits have to be constantly checked for hypothermia and sleep deprivation. The general question of whether a woman should be put through the same tests as men is answered quickly. The only insights into conflicts that arise are a recruit running in horror when Jordan unpacks her Tampax, and a mocking remark about her long hair. Courage Under Fire wasn't the best movie of 1996, but at least it took a more in-depth look at the question of male and female relationships and conflicts on the battlefield. The main relationship investigated in G.I. Jane is between Jordan and her drill sergeant, Master Chief John Urgayle (Viggo Mortensen), and it's a disturbing one. When he's not gawking at her in the showers, he's degrading her in front of the troops - and we're supposed to believe he's doing her a favor by toughening her up.
The very casting of Moore in the role seems to do the film a disservice. You have to give her credit for undergoing this kind of physical torture, but there's something absurd about seeing her tanned, silicone-enhanced body squeezed voluptuously into her fatigues. Would the first female Navy SEAL have to look like this? In Flashdance-like interludes, Scott pays further homage to Moore's bod with work-out scenes - scenes that started to remind me of her last big-screen effort, Striptease. Let's not overlook her acting: Moore's tough, one-of-the-guys repartee with the male recruits started to feel a bit forced.
The film still needs to be made that speaks to the contemporary debate on women and combat, and all the headlines about sexual harassment and double standards. Watching G.I. Jane, you'll have to keep reminding yourself that this is a film by Ridley Scott. The gleaming military hardware, the soundtrack's epic crescendos, and the fast-paced action scenes look and feel like the work of his brother, Top Gun Tony.