GI Jane Review

I`m all for giving girls a go, but how many girls would want to go through what Demi Moore endures as Lieutenant Jordan O`Neill in GI Jane ?. Canny old Senator Lillian Dehaven - played with relish by Anne Bancroft - has her own agenda for pushing the Navy into accepting a test case for equal status for women in the military. The statistics are pretty awful - a quarter of the jobs in the Navy are off-limits to women, and yet they`re the jobs that promotion depends on. O`Neill is a topographical analyst with a pretty impressive sporting background; she`s the one selected for training with the Navy Seals, as the film modestly puts it, `the most intensive military training known to man`. O`Neill takes on the challenge with intensity; she wants to go through exactly what the men go through - but there`s resistance from above and below...I find it just a touch ridiculous when Americans take themselves seriously in films like this - the whole premise is so gung-ho, with a climactic secret invasion of Libya that is terrifyingly arrogant; but this is a Ridley Scott film and he has a certain power as a director so that the gung-ho scenes are so well filmed and edited, they`re seductive. Demi Moore impresses - one-armed push-ups?! - the girl`s fearsome - but Viggo Mortensen steals the film, with his sunglasses reflecting his contempt, and his short shorts revealing his swagger as master chief bully, who`s going to get his regular fall-out rate of trainees even if it kills them. He`s such a charismatic actor. The plot is actually a bit thin, screenwriters David Twohy and Danielle Alexandra ran out of puff with the story of political intrigue, but just to witness Demi Moore standing up to the pressure of this training exercise is an entertainment in itself.