Top 100 Movies Of The 1990's: #13 A Few Good Men
Box Office: $141.3 Million Dollars
Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Jack Nicholson), Best Film Editing, Best Sound Mixing
Oscar Wins: None
MovieRankings.Net: 87/100
Available To Stream: AMC+, Amazon Prime Video
A Few Good Men is the first movie Aaron Sorkin ever wrote. It was based on a play he had written in 1988. The script was so good that it sold to Hollywood before the play ever debuted. It's still wild to me over thirty years later that this didn't get nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. It's not like there wasn't room. Scent Of A Woman got screenplay nomination for fuck's sake!
It's that incredible screenplay that puts this movie into the stratosphere of the best courtroom movie ever for me. It's the opposite of The Verdict. In that movie, Paul Newman elevates it into greatness. Don't get me wrong, The Verdict had a brilliant script by David Mamet but Newman's performance is one of the best ever. He makes you care about and believe in someone that we really shouldn't. In A Few Good Men, you had some really fantastic acting across the board but it's the dialogue that is the biggest takeaway for me.
It's always clear who the good guys and bad guys are in this. I don't want to paint a picture that's more complex than it really is but one thing I do appreciate in A Few Good Men is that the motive is so well explained. Jack Nicholson is perfect and so believable as Col. Jessup. He also makes some fair counterpoints to the ideal perspective coming from Kaffee (Tom Cruise). Who are we to judge something we don't understand? As Americans, we all want safety and the military to provide that. But then, is it also fair to criticize or judge how we achieve that safety? Jessup believes we can't have it both ways.
Jessup is obviously wrong in that overarching black and white belief but there is nuance here. In A Few Good Men, Private Santiago dies. You can't be having young men die under our watch but when you are training people to go into war, this isn't going to be cuddles and kisses. I love an intelligent movie where you have have discussions like this afterwards. This is a complicated and pretty evergreen issue. I think that's why it feels more modern than a 30 year old movie should.
A lot of that credit should also go to director Rob Reiner. This is his absolute peak and it's at the end of an amazing run that started with Stand By Me in 1986 and included A Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, (#41) Misery and this. He would also direct An American President a couple years later but he lost his touch after that. But in that 1986-92 run, there weren't many better directors. I feel like when the independent directors took over after 1994 and it became more of a director-first medium as opposed to a studio-led one for the rest of the 90's, Reiner couldn't quite keep up.
Sidney Baldwin. Shutterstock Images.
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I've glossed over the great acting in this and that's pretty unfair. This is Demi Moore's best work. She's also idealistic but believable. You felt like you were in the room when Cruise, Moore and Kevin Pollack were trying to figure out how to tackle this case. Kevin Bacon gives yet another great 1990's performance here. He's not just some evil guy. He's actually a good guy doing his job and has his reasons for doing so. You also have great character actors like JT Walsh, Christopher Guest and Keifer Sutherland nailing this great dialogue.
A Few Good Men does the impossible. It's a courtroom movie that's exciting. It has this big, loud characters that are believable and have some nuance. It's about the military, which most people are not actively involved in, but allows everyone watching it to have an opinion.
I know it's cliche but they really don't make movies like this anymore. Now, the country is even more divided and anything to do with military or the courtroom has political undertones. Look at The Trial Of The Chicago 7 (written and directed by Sorkin). It's so one-sided and needs to paint certain characters as bumbling idiots and/or evildoers.
Because A Few Good Men shows these characters as actual human beings doing things for reasons they truly deem correct is why this movie is just as interesting now as when it came out.
13. A Few Good Men
14. The Fugitive
15. The Truman Show
16. Fargo
17. Swingers
18. Reservoir Dogs
19. There's Something About Mary
20. Sleepers
21. Schindler's List
22. Rushmore
23. Fight Club
24. Saving Private Ryan
25. True Romance
26. Dumb & Dumber
27. Kingpin
28. Donnie Brasco
29. Heat
30. Terminator 2: Judgement Day
31. Rounders
32. Unforgiven
33. Trainspotting
34. The Game
35. Out Of Sight
36. Carlito's Way
37. Seven
38. L.A. Confidential
39. Speed
40. Gattaca
41. Misery
42. Tombstone
43. Ransom
44. Wayne's World
45. The Insider
46. Back To The Future Part III
47. A Bronx Tale
48. The People Vs. Larry Flynt
49. Eyes Wide Shut
50. The Sandlot
51. Happy Gilmore
52. Contact
53. The Green Mile
54. Man On The Moon
55. Boyz N The Hood
56. Grosse Pointe Blank
57. Independence Day
58. The Rainmaker
59. Go
60. The Firm
61. Magnolia
62. The Talented Mr. Ripley
63. Tommy Boy
64. The Usual Suspects
65. In The Line Of Fire
66. My Cousin Vinny
67. Awakenings
68. JFK
69. Toy Story
70. Home Alone
71. Jerry Maguire
72. Titanic
73. Billy Madison
74. Apollo 13
75. Braveheart
76. Edward Scissorhands
77. Cape Fear
78. The River Wild
79. What's Eating Gilbert Grape?
80. 12 Monkeys
81. Stir Of Echoes
82. Mission: Impossible
83. Total Recall
84. Quiz Show
85. For Love Of The Game
86. Being John Malkovich
87. Men In Black
88. Scream
89. Alive
90. Three Kings
91. Glengarry Glen Ross
92. Die Hard With A Vengeance
93. The Blair Witch Project
94. Twister
95. Dirty Work
96. Election
97. Tremors
98. Any Given Sunday
99. The Wedding Singer
100. Clerks