G.I. Jane (1997) – Review

There’s a little theory I have concerning the sensational Scott brothers that suggests that they kind swapped roles during the mid-to-late 90s. Ridley, the more “arty” one had sort of fallen out of favour after the triumph of Thelma And Louise and struggled to score legitimate hit, while brother Tony had gone from the commercially bombastic likes of Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop II to crafting the more thoughtful fare of True Romance and Crimson Tide and by 1997/98, their roles had well and truly been reversed when the younger brother delivered the ambitious thriller Enemy Of The State while a year earlier, Ridley gave us G.I. Jane – a military flick that essentially ended up being Top Gun, but with feminism in place of a fighter jet and aviation sunglasses. Reviews at the time weren’t kind and the box office wasn’t great, but after the movie managed to regain some cultural significance from the most unexpected circumstances – namely Will Smith slapping the shit out of Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars – I guess it’s time to give Demi Moore’s action vehicle a second go.

In the face of unrelenting pressure to give women more of a place in the military, the United States Navy, under the crusading gaze of Senator Lillian DeHaven, concede to carry out an experimental test in order to see if the “fairer sex” can actually hack it on the ground during war time scenarios. However, in an effort to muddy the results, the powers that be decide that the test the chosen woman will have to best is to train to become a member of the U.S. Navy Combined Reconnaissance Team, a post similar to Navy SEALs which boasts a 60% drop out rate.
Enter Lieutenant Jordon O’Neil, a gifted topographical analyst who is picked to be the guinea pig who is going to have to weather not just the unbelievably grueling training, but virtually an entire, hostile Navy, most of whom would love to see her crash out, thus settling the debate about a gender-neutral fighting force once and for all.
Literally within minutes of agreeing, O’Neil is facing issues from her protective boyfriend, top brass who want to panda to her apparent feminine “shortcomings” and a bunch of fellow trainees who really don’t want her there (one in particular seems to be horrified at the sight of tampons in the barracks). However, once the training starts and the pain sets in, O’Neil manages to gut out the first couple of days, refusing any special treatment whatsoever and takes anything harsh but fair commanding Master Chief John James Urgayle can throw at her. But threatening to undo all she’s accomplished is the growing press interest in her quest, which simply makes those who want to see her fail take far sneaker methods.

So after a long overdue reassessment, it seems that G.I. Jane, for all of its many faults, certainly doesn’t deserve to be solely remembered as the film that inspired the really lame joke that caused that slap-happy result at the Oscars. Yes it’s rather naive and yes it veers into the realms of the problematic here and there, but that doesn’t mean that Demi Moore’s shaven-headed statement isn’t that bad of a watch, even if, at times, it weirdly feels like Michael Bay is trying to remake Private Benjamin. As ever, Scott’s ability to catch the eye are as muscular as ever as cinema’s most prolific visualist once again takes an uncomfortable scenario (in this case, being brutalised by strict military training) and makes it look as fucking cool as humanly possible. The opening blast of training – which is drawn out over a day and a night – is a flurry of discombobulating edits, harsh sound design and plenty of close ups of Moore’s pain-wracked face as she’s buffeted by both the stormy elements and Viggo Mortensen’s obscenely masculine moustache.
The problem is, while I’m assuming that Scott and Moore’s intentions are pure, it’s heavy handed as hell and unloads plenty of rounds into it’s own feet numerous times as it attempts to navigate the gender divide as clumsily as some of the in-film characters do. While it may have made sense on paper to deliver a female-led military drama with the same sweaty intensity as an 80s action movie, its need to keep the the stress daily all the way up to eleven means that it screams the points it’s trying to make in an abridged, frenzied form instead of taking the occasional breath to lay things out plainly. Literally every conversation is charged up the wazoo with gender politics and we never get a feel for Jordan O’Neil as a person as the movie trips over itself to insist we must give a shit at all times because she’s a woman God dammit!

Obviously the problem isn’t that the message is without worth and Scott’s insistence of telling it in the from of a traditionally “macho” type of filmmaking style is an interesting  choice, but the movie stumbles whenever it moves away from Moore determination to prove that she’s got the right stuff. Moore copped flack for her performance back in 97, even going as far as earning her a Razzie Award, but while she’s a bit too earnest when delivering the usual, jingoistic dialogue that these films usually demand, she tackles the physical demands of the movie with aplomb. In fact, when the movie requires her to have the living crap kicked out of her as she drags herself through the surf, withstanding torture procedures, or shaving her head, it’s no different than the ungodly shit Leonardo DiCaprio put himself through in The Revenant and he won an Oscar for that!
In this respect, G.I. Jane actually manages to pull off its point, calling out the exact double standards that still plague women today, but compared to those other Ridley Scott leading women, namely Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley and, of course, Thelma & Louise, O’Neil sadly feels more like a parody of male action tropes when she should be overcoming them. The thing is, if the movie had solely concerned itself with its lead completing her odessy, it could have driven its mission home with far more success, but when it throws in a duplicitous female senator, and a thoroughly unnecessary ripoff of Top Gun’s sudden action climax – which, by the way, felt similarly forced when Tom Cruise did it – G.I. Jane does its lofty aims something of a disservice by trying to subvert 80s action trends.
However, the genuinely impressive sight of a ripped Moore doing push ups so strenuous, they would make Stallone rip a groin muscle and the solid work of Mortensen is further undone by a dated (yet depressingly accurate) subplot that sees Jordan’s enemies trying to get her ousted by making the accusation that she’s a lesbian.

The concept of a female aggressively playing in a masculine sandbox will always be an enticing one and watching Moore relishing telling Mortensen to “suck my dick” is certainly worth the price of admission, but Scott’s flair and Moore’s grit seems stuck somewhere in the middle between being far too serious to act as a goofy actioner and far too dumb to make its point adequately.
I feel that if it had been made ten years earlier, it would have been revolutionary. If it had been made five year later it would have been memorably subversive, but G.I. Jane struggles to be all that she could be (I know that’s the army, but you get the point).

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