A Few Good Men

In the heart of the nation's capital, in a courthouse of the U.S. government, one man will stop at nothing to keep his honor, and one will stop at nothing to find the truth.
A Few Good Men (1992)
Timing: 2:18 (138 min)
7.7/10
371 451
—
no scores
7.6/10
4329
7.7/10
315000
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Release date
Country
Genre
Budget
$40 000 000
Revenue
$243 240 178
Director
Scenario
Producer
Rob Reiner, Andrew Scheinman, David Brown, Rachel Pfeffer, William S. Gilmore
Composer
Artist
J. Michael Riva
Audition
Janet Hirshenson, Jane Jenkins
Editing
Robert Leighton, Steven Nevius
All team (65)

Short description

A Few Good Men follows a military lawyer, Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, who is assigned to defend two Marines stationed at the Guantánamo Bay base in Cuba. The pair are accused of killing a fellow Marine during a disciplinary hazing known as a "Code Red," and they claim they were acting under orders from above. What looks like a routine case turns into something far more serious when Kaffee and his co-counsel, Lieutenant Commander JoAnne Galloway, find evidence pointing toward senior officers, including the base commander, Colonel Nathan Jessep. The courtroom becomes the setting for a confrontation between the young defense team and a rigid military hierarchy determined to protect itself.

Rob Reiner directed the film, the seventh of the nineteen features he has made in chronological order, arriving between Misery in 1990 and North in 1994. Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay, and Reiner produced alongside Andrew Scheinman and David Brown. Tom Cruise plays Kaffee, with Jack Nicholson as Jessep, Demi Moore as Galloway, and Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland and Kevin Pollak in supporting roles.

Released in December 1992, the film cost about 40 million dollars and took roughly 243 million dollars worldwide, a strong commercial result for a courtroom drama. On IMDb it holds 7.7 from around 315,000 votes and on TMDB 7.6 from a much smaller pool of voters; a critics' rating of 7.6 from 135 reviews places it in similar territory to the audience scores.

What's left behind the scenes

  • The basis for the plot was a similar story that occurred in the practice of Aaron Sorkin's sister. He wrote a play based on it, and then a screenplay for the film. The only significant difference was that in the real case, the injured soldier sustained serious injuries but survived.
  • Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin makes a cameo appearance as a lawyer in a bar, talking to a woman about one of his cases.
  • The premiere of the original play of the same name by Aaron Sorkin took place at the Music Box Theater on November 15, 1989. A total of 497 performances were given.
  • The phrase from the film "You can't handle the truth" was ranked 29th on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 most famous movie quotes.
  • The well-known writer and screenwriter William Goldman did some work revising the script. Its author, Aaron Sorkin, was so pleased with his work and the changes made that he rewrote his play taking them into account and published it in a new edition.
  • At the early stages of the project, Wolfgang Bodison worked as a scout, searching for suitable filming locations until the director noticed him and considered him the ideal candidate for the role of the marine.
  • The word "sir" (generally as a form of address to a superior rank) appears 164 times in the film, averaging once every 50 seconds.
  • The role of Joanna Holloway could also have gone to Helen Hunt, Linda Hamilton, and Elizabeth Perkins.
  • While searching for a suitable location for the trial, the producers learned that standard military courtrooms typically featured a very basic setting. To make it more photogenic to their liking, they chose an empty room in a courthouse building that was already disused.
  • A love scene between Tom Cruise and Demi Moore was planned for the film, but it was decided to drop it as it wasn’t deemed necessary.
  • Among the spectators observing the trial, you can spot the mother of one of the producers, Kevin Pollack.

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