David O'ConnellAn Officer and a Gentleman
March 1st 2011 02:16
Some films you avoid like the plague. Especially those that come with a repellent whiff of ‘chick flick’ attached. Similar to the way in which I artfully dodged Top Gun for so long before inevitably succumbing, An Officer and a Gentleman has been one I’ve long avoided. Then it just fell into my arms. And so I decided to harden up (in a metaphorical sense), to desist from the kind of vociferous complaints expected of my species and to endure this experiment of attempting to outlast a much earlier incarnation of Richard Gere, the man whose extraneous rapid-fire blinking to denote moments of medium to high level emotional fluctuation has always driven me to distraction.
Gere, as Zack Mayo, begins the film - after an opening montage which shows a younger version of his character spying on his whoring old man in the Philippines – with a very stylish mullet. Let’s admit that for openers. Mayo harbours a desire to be a naval officer – or are his motivations more closely related to partaking of any activity that eliminates him from the sphere of his lecherous old father? (A Freudian analysis seems a bit unworthy in light of where Douglas Day Stewart’s superficial screenplay is headed). Either way, old dad, played with a typically gruff lack of finesse by Robert Loggia, isn’t much of a role model for a studly young man with a mullet and shameful tattoo. But soon the mullet is no more as training commences, replaced by a close and handsome crop, the kind that has apparently set millions of lonely female hearts aflutter.
‘Mayonnaise’ (a predictably dim dubbing that wears out its welcome after a second or third refrain) also finds himself a dim-witted best mate, the doomed Sid (David Keith). Sid’s a bit like Top Gun’s Goose – the foolish but brave comrade who falls for the stereotypical blonde who couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag (sincerest apologies Meg Ryan circa 1984); a blonde who pretends to like him so she can pretend to get pregnant so she can pretend she wants tag along with his overseas postings where she can stop pretending and…………………….aw shit, this made a hell of a lot more sense when I thought I had it worked out in my head. Anyway, Sid = Goose, OK?: Blonde girlfriend, nasty twist, dire outcome. Spoilers be damned.
But before all that, into Mayo’s life walks the mighty Lou Gossett trying to pretend that he’s not auditioning for an understudy role in Full Metal Jacket Part 2. As Sgt. Foley, he becomes Mayonnaise’s Arch Nemesis, the equivalent of a video game’s Boss level, the mortal enemy whose steely resolve to grind his charges to dust barely separates him from an instructional machine, yet with the iron heart of Uncle Sam purring inside.
From a tragic male perspective (and I say tragic in the sense that any male still watching beyond the half-way point desperately needs something to cling to in solace) Lou Gossett breathes inestimable life into this movie. He owns it in fact – whether inspecting the shine of the men’s buckles for depth perspective on his own reflection, leading those ridiculous rhyming verbal chants only men on parade are allowed to sing, or sticking a hose down Gere’s pleading-for-mercy throat. Foley’s a bully, a showoff - and yet a sanity preserver for us all, especially when dispatching a scrawny young David Caruso in that innocent time before he thought he could act.
Pain and torture The Gossett Way
When Lou’s not around, things quickly turn to mush. The love interest slinks into the frame in the shape of Debra Winger’s Paula, an impoverished beauty attempting to entice Mayo’s interest, spice up his downtime and yet inspire him to battle his way through training and lead her to the promised land, i.e. anywhere on Planet Earth that isn’t this crummy one-horse town full of desperadoes in which she lives with her mother Grace Zabriskie (a wise move really, for anyone – especially David Lynch fans - who’ve seen how Zabriskie fares in later films will know that her certifiable madness is surely an affliction worth side-stepping).
Hot and heavy scenes are intermittently inserted for the females, Gere kissing Winger like he’s going hard at a huge chunk of collapsing pavlova with his hands tied behind his back. He outwardly denies he’s in love with this prostitute in disguise. This conclusion may be denied by or offend females, but if the blonde is a whore, why isn’t Paula? Because she possesses a heart of gold and fancies that after many aborted attempts at rapid conversion of a naval man in the narrow window that training provides, she’s finally found ‘the one’?
The rest is amiably, rousingly predictable, with a nice little bare-fisted fight between Mayonnaise and Foley added on for the men who need to know who has the most resilient set of testicles. The fairytale ends, the sound of the pop anthem, 'Love Lifts us up Where We Belong', chimes in to nauseating effect. Bashing the mute button, the closing credits feel like the arrival of paradise.
My belated visitation with An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) was at an end: another foul aroma wafting over the 80’s had momentarily entered my hemisphere, leaving me sprawled on the carpet and begging for the Glen-20.
Director Taylor Hackford would progress on to so much better things, not the least of those being Helen Mirren. Crazily, Lou Gossett was awarded an Oscar, which feels like minor revenge for the males who submitted to screenings and had to hear their partners’ incessant subsequent claims of the film being a ‘classic’, but may actually have done more harm in perpetuating a myth of the film’s worthiness, something that time reveals to be a blatant untruth.
Love lifts her up where she belongs.
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Never seen No Way Out, maybe that'll be my next nostalgic jaunt down the crap-strewn streets of the 80's!
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