Midweek Mention... A Few Good Men

A Few Good Men

Reegs: A few good dads.

Dan: A few good men. That's what I called into service for this week's

Sidey: Yeah, We had, maybe some time constraints this week. So we've gone for effectively two midweek episodes and we, you write down, we are kicking off this first one with a few good men, which had quite a lot of good innuendo potential on the group.

Dan: Yeah, it did. We went through just

Reegs: We talked about movies we could pair it with, didn't we, to...

Sidey: I'm quite happy with the U R O I've already invented for this. Okay.

Reegs: good. Excellent.

Dan: invented. Okay, Well,

Reegs: It's nice, those little easter eggs, the little nuggets, the

Sidey: URLs. Yeah. That matter to one person.

Reegs: Yeah, and me, and me.

Sidey: Cool. So we are becoming quite the Rob Reiner fans

on this

Dan: makes good movies, you'd seen this before.

Sidey: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'd seen this before. Weeks,

Dan: Reeks? So we'd all seen this before.

Sidey: I think it's, and we'll get to it, but it's again, it's one of, and the thing I'm thinking about is Rob Reino, when we talked about. Misery, it has one of those moments that transcends like cinema and and everyone must be aware of where we're going to get to later on in this film, you know, even if you haven't seen the movie, you will 100% be aware of jack later on.

Yeah, we'll get to it. So it has that, but also it has all the stuff. Leading up to it. So Rob Reiner and Aaron Sorkin, and I think Pete Shame's not here because mentioned his name before and drew a complete blank. Yeah. With with Pete.

Reegs: I didn't, I didn't remember that this was Aaron Sorkin. I certainly didn't remember it was a based on a play that he'd written in

Dan: yeah.

Reegs: 1989 before it was brought to the big screen by Reiner with, like you say, Jack Nicholson and a host of other stars, including a young, very young Tom Cruise.

Dan: Well, it's getting on for a big time. A big role this one for, for Tom Cruise at this time. He just stepped up really. I think he'd done, you know, off the back of a few good movies. And, and this one was looking at a serious drama and,

Sidey: Is it worth looking up where this is in

Dan: probably.

Sidey: filmography? Because he does get top billing in this one. Ahead of Jack Nicholson, which is like a big deal.

Dan: Oh, there must be the time when he's, he's kind of transcended then.

Sidey: He's on the up and up for sure. Yeah. But this is 92. So I guess Days of Thunder and stuff sort of era. Yep. Okay.

Reegs: Cole Trickle, I think was his name in that,

Dan: yeah. Yeah, he was a

Sidey: It sounds like when you're going for a piss or something,

Reegs: It That drip,

Yeah. .

Sidey: And

Check out the drip today. Check

Yeah. Courtroom stuff.

This is a, you know, a courtroom drama.

Dan: this

Reegs: We did top five courtroom scenes. We talked about this movie, of course we did. And that's because a good chunk of it is set, is as, you know, in the courtroom itself, which I guess we'll get into.

The other thing I didn't know about it is that it was kind of based on a true story.

Sidey: Yeah, I read about that today, fucking hell.

Reegs: yeah, maybe we'll get into that at the end as well.

Dan: So it starts off with a couple of army guys scampering down a corridor.

Sidey: Is the marching around scene before that, where they twiddle the guns around, is that after? Yeah.

Dan: I think it kind of opens. Riggs, you're normally good at

Reegs: get No, you're right, it does It opens with the guy getting bundled into his room, basically, by two other guys. And an assault takes place, he's very You see him, I think, bound and gagged,

Sidey: Yeah, they shove something in his gob and gaffer tape that around his face and then, yeah. And

Reegs: And it's we're in, one thing I should say, and I definitely hadn't remembered this because it comes up straight away, is that we're in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which of course meant something in 1992, means something completely different now. You know, and it, but it's interesting how this place has become synonymous with brutality.

Anyway, we see this Marine get assaulted by two of his fellow Marines. Yeah. Very quickly, and then we get the parade scene, I think, that you were talking about.

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: The show of discipline and arms

Sidey: Yeah, they're on parade and the twiddling round of the guns was very impressive, I thought. Yeah. Just looked really . I'm, you know, I'm not really,

Reegs: you cut straight from this scene of brutality taking place in a military institution, in a, in, just outside of America, obviously, in, well, not just outside of America, in fucking Cuba. But, and yeah. And then it smash cuts to all these American flags and soldiers doing these, like, rituals

Sidey: Pageantry and what have you. But there's a shot where they're, you're just looking down the line, sort of on an angle, and the way that each one does it in sequence just looks very cool. Whatever you think about the whole military thing, but they're just that, you know, the level of training and, and, you know.

Dan: Discipline, timing, got it all right. Yeah, they're all on point.

Reegs: I think then we get introduced to Lieutenant Commander Joanne Galloway, who's Demi Moore's character.

Mm-hmm. Emmy Moore's character. And she is rehearsing her lines for her pitch that she wants to make to her boss who is a sort of. I don't fully understand this, but this sort of legal, she works in internal affairs, basically.

Dan: right. She's military internal affairs and she's going to see a higher ranking colonel about a potential case and she really wants to take the lead on it. And it turns out it's this case, that two Marines had ended up killing a fellow Marine and it seemed to be kind of cut and dry, but she seemed to think there was more to

Sidey: smells the rat, yeah, yeah.

Reegs: And she goes to see her very quickly. The sort of facts of the case are laid out. This code red terminology is introduced, which is a sort of unsanctioned.

But not officially sanctioned, but

Sidey: definitely ordered, definitely ordered

Reegs: definitely ordered hazing of yeah, bad recruits, if you like, in inverted

Dan: like initiation or also with

Sidey: or punishment

Dan: your punishment for breaking the unwritten rules or the written rules.

But they're the real punishments within that core group.

Reegs: And the private who was the victim Santiago, was involved in an incident where one of the office, one of the marines who assaulted him, he had reported for a, what do they call it, a fence, fence line incident that he shot at his counterpart across the,

Dan: Across the, the,

Reegs: Cuban line of Yeah, yeah.

Dan: called, the Cuban line of shooting.

Sidey: he had broken the chain of command, hadn't he? To request a transfer.

Reegs: Yes, exactly. He'd made loads of

Dan: Yeah. So this, this guy that died, he, he had made he was scared. He didn't like it. He'd written this in this letter. He really felt for his his safety there.

He wanted a transfer out and to help facilitate that, he was prepared to give evidence against another Marine.

Reegs: He'd passed out on a run, hadn't he, as well? There was some other thing,

Dan: Yeah, yeah, you've seen this in these kind of little montages just before Tom Cruise is brought into, into scene, because he's the, the lawyer who's assigned to the case, and although Demi Moore is leading, is higher up than him, or, or beats him in rank, she outranks him, he has jurisdiction on this case.

Reegs: he's the lead counsel assigned and it's pretty clear why, because he's a bit of a, it's not exactly a hustler, but he.

Sidey: He operates in plea bargains,

Reegs: operates on plea bargains. He's really good at them. So, and we see him doing his business where he's introduced playing baseball, but he's actually negotiating a deal.

And he's kind of a little bit glib and a little bit underhand and that sort of thing. And we'll come to find out that his father is a big senator, I think. And he's on a path that he or his father also went through. The Navy. And so he's like seeing out his time to do three or four years to please his father basically coasting in the Navy through the legal route before he gets out to go into private practice.

So, pretty soon we get all of that kind of information relayed

Dan: he's won like 70 of his 70 cases or managed to plea his way out them or, or whatever it is. So he is this legal boffin when they first meet, they have that scene, don't they?

Wait. kind of walks in eating an apple and he sits down at the desk and he doesn't really appreciate her rank and he doesn't seem to give too much.

Reegs: That's right, yeah, that authority thing comes into

Dan: right. Yeah, yeah. But he's got that charming smile on his face all the

Sidey: time.

Well, yeah, that authority thing comes into play when they first go and speak to Colonel Jessop. Because what happens, Galloway, she suspects this code red. Out the gate. She's like, they didn't, they haven't just gone in and, you know Yeah. Tied this guy up and beaten him. You know, something's

Dan: this guy up and beeped and, you know, it's something. Well, he's not

Reegs: the guy.

He guys, he's, he's got them 12 years. He's like, oh,

Dan: got them

Reegs: that's it. Of life. Yeah.

He's not even met them. He's not even talked about the case with them.

 We didn't meet Kevin Pollock, who's his,

his Sam Weinberg, who's his sort of associate counsel who gets assigned to go along with him as well, who suggests that they wear whites.

It'll be hot, you know, when you land and all that stuff. And as soon as they land, the guys are like here's some camo jackets. Yeah. The Cubans like to shoot the officers in white a bit cringey. So yeah, they've made a durable first impression. They look like Noobs, obviously. Yeah. And they're off to see Jessop, who straightaway, you know, has, you can see his like power complex.

He runs everything. Rules the roost. Yeah.

Dan: Well, Jeff, Jeff is Jack, Jack Nicholson, and he's just grabs every scene, doesn't he? He's he just sucks you in. You can't help but, but watch him. And as Jess, he is he just takes the character on and he, he becomes that real mean confident you know, above the law.

kind of general colonel or whatever he is And he's he's happy to help he's happy to oblige

Sidey: seen him though in the office with the rest of the sort of senior leadership.

Reegs: Keith O'Sutherland.

Sidey: get the Southerners there and JT Walsh. He's got some pretty amazing glasses. He's, as soon as you see him, he looks kind of ill at ease with the whole thing. Kiefer Sutherland, I think, is a true believer.

He's on side. But yeah, he definitely is like the alpha. I mean, it's the military, right? So it is the command anyway. But there's no doubt, like, he is the

fucking rule of the roost. And it,

Dan: the military right, so

Reegs: we've seen...

Those three have

Dan: is the command anyway, but there's no doubt, like,

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: is the focus. Rushed conversations after he died and what had happened and

Reegs: well, his second in command, JT Walsh that you were talking about, he's the one who objects.

We see a conversation where he says to move Santiago off the base for his safety. And Sutherland is given instructions to administer this code read by Jessop. And JT Walsh tries to confront him about it. And he's absolutely put in his place afterwards when he is asked to stay, isn't he? 'cause he is like, we came up through the ranks together, but I went higher than you.

I'm the Colonel, you know, so you see how much he just rules the place with an absolute iron fist.

Dan: Yeah. And he's yeah, he's a, he's a real hardass. So he, he's, when he's now speaking to Demi Moore and Tom Cruise, they've got this they have a couple of meetings.

So

Reegs: meetings. the first

one is that horrible lunch where he, he just doesn't answer it.

They ask him questions. They say, you tell us anything you like and he will, he's like, I will. And then so then they ask him questions like, and he's just like one word answers long, you know, it's pretty clear he is being evasive, obstructive.

Dan: Demi Moore

Reegs: this, when he starts

Dan: Moore starts to kind of ask him a few questions and Tom Cruise is just saying no, no, calm down.

We've got what we wanted.

Reegs: your powder dry.

Dan: I think he'd already given away something that Tom Cruise had around the case. Learned a little bit

Reegs: It doesn't cruise Colombo in with the I'm going to get the, just if Tantiago was going to be on the first plane, then it will be in the logs, right? You get the paperwork. So.

Sidey: And he says, yes, and I get up to walk away and he says, but you've got to ask me nicely. Yeah. And it's just pure like who's in who's fucking in charge.

I've got the power

Dan: And

Reegs: And we're not getting across how

Sidey: and cruz you can tell he's bristling. He doesn't want to fuck He just wants to say no you've got to fucking give it but he says please sir Would you be kind enough to you know, provide us with those records and he just sort of Smiles as if say i've fucking got one over you

Reegs: over

Sidey: Yes, yes, I will yes you can

Dan: over you. Oh, because the first thing he does when he's Yes, I will Yes, you can have that. Well, I

Sidey: Well I think right from then Cruz's character knows that his ego will outdo him at some stage. He won't be able to fucking get out of his own way. Yeah. And he's gonna fuck it.

Dan: And, and that's kind of a hunch he goes to a little bit later on, isn't it?

There's,

Reegs: he won't

be

able to We haven't talked about this, but Galloway is an interesting character because obviously she's a high ranking woman in the military and clearly has faced a lot of, like, struggles to get there, and then he's really demeaning. Jessup, he says, oh, have you ever had a blowjob from a senior officer or something like that?

And, like, really horrible

Dan: No, and and she's kind of yeah It does respond to that a little bit and starts asking about questions and giving away their hand a little bit too much but

Reegs: So anyway, this is, they leave and they come back and this is when they offer them the 12 years, isn't it? And the marines are like, no, we, you know, we signed up to a code of honour and we did what we thought we would, you know, was honourable and until we're proven that it isn't, we, we think we did what the code says.

Sidey: I think, is this not a bit where they also say, well, you know, whatever deal we take, whatever we come back, we get dishonorably discharged, and then what?

We're fucked. Like, we can't do anything. So, no, we're not having it. Yeah,

Dan: they're, they're still half expecting to be this to and

going back into the core right up until probably...

The court case, they're still expecting it to be thrown out with all the conversations, particularly one of the characters who, who kind of follows another in and Demi Moore speaks to his aunt Ginny and she then becomes his lead counsel.

They're both then lawyers, both taking their but he is the lead counsel for it, isn't he? He's the one that's going to argue in court.

Reegs: There's still time, Dan, for a bit of Tom Cruise, having to think about whether he really is gonna commit his, like he knows what he's committing to. Like if he goes after this guy who's Jessop Jack Nicholson's character is in line for a promotion to be director of the, I don't know, c i a or

Dan: This is what it comes down to, isn't it?

Reegs: it?

That, that is also on the line, and Cruz has to go and have a little moody think under a bridge for a little while. Do you remember, like,

Sidey: Yeah. Well, doesn't he also, he goes boozing, doesn't he?

Reegs: Yeah. No, well, he goes boozing at the end when they fuck it as well, though.

Sidey: Well, because he has, he has a visit from Lieutenant...

Colonel Matthew Andrew Markinson, but that's JT Walsh's character. Yeah, he kind of lol deep throats him He's sitting in the back of his car as he gets in. And basically says He fucking ordered it. Yeah, he tells him like point blank, you know You just need to follow through with this you need to keep going because it was an order and then They go to Kevin Bacon, don't they, and say it was a fucking order, you know, we've got him.

They've got him, but how do

Reegs: it

Dan: Of course, we did.

He's slurring. we mention that Kevin Bacon is the, the,

Sidey: He's

Reegs: was a fucking

Sidey: He's the defender of the prosecution. No, yeah, wait.

Reegs: It's, yeah, it's, he's the prosecutor. Bacon is the prosecutor because Cruz is

Sidey: The two guys.

Reegs: the Downie and she's defending Dawson.

Sidey: I don't know why they had to go... I miss this bit, because Kevin Bacon, they go and see him playing basketball, don't they? Yeah. And tell him, it's a fucking, it was an order.

Dan: They're, they're kind of friends and they've been doing this plea bargaining all the way across. First Kevin Bacon's holding all the cards and he's saying, look, Mike, give him 12 years.

Then he offers it him, he goes, go owe him 10 or eight or something. Yeah. And it's, it is too good a deal. Too fast for Cruz. He doesn't take it, he thinks. If he goes down that hard, that fast, there's something else at play here and as they uncover and pick at it a little bit, you're right, they, they uncover that in fact it's Jessop had ordered this code red with this hazing and it had gone wrong and these two marines.

Reegs: Kendrick, the

Dan: Yeah, these two marines through the chain of commands, which took in Hendrick and Kiefer Sutherland had.

Sidey: But it's still, at this point Someone's told them that it was an order.

How do you prove it? How do you really get him on the you know, get it proven in court? Yeah

Reegs: Anyway,

Sidey: Well, they don't subpoena him until a bit later on.

Reegs: Hey, Margaret Markinson

Sidey: no.

Dan: Margaret Markinson? Joseph

Reegs: doesn't come until the

Dan: Yeah, Jessup doesn't come into a little bit

Reegs: doesn't come until the trial because we do have a little moment, just after the Bridgy Moody moment, like, there's like the dramatic moment of the arraignment and you think Cruise is gonna ask, he's had this discussion with Demi Moore and Sam.

About whether or not you should take on the case and you think he's going to say, oh, they're going to change their lawyer, but instead he enters the plea of not guilty. And then we're off into the trial, the defense. And I, I can't remember the exact order of things, but first off there's an attempt to prove by.

Kevin Bacon's character that code reds don't even exist. They, you know, he gets the manual out. He's all smarmy. Like, can you point to me where it is in the manual and all this? He's like, Oh no, to this dumb fuck soldier. He's like, Oh no, you can't

Dan: What does he He points

Reegs: what the code red is. And then he's obviously it's off manual.

And then as he's walking back past Tom Cruise, he grabs the book out of his hand and he goes, can you show me where the mess hall is? And he's like, yeah, so it's a good bit

Dan: That's right, yeah, he goes, not everything is in the manual.

Reegs: Yeah.

So they, that's how they start with the thing about the code red defense. Cause they're essentially their defenses.

We were only following orders, which, you know, obviously worked really well at like, you know, for the Nazis and stuff, but it seems a little bit of a different story in this incident, especially then they get in a doctor, don't they, and they, they have an attempt to discredit the doctor essentially to say that this guy, Santiago was suffering from some.

congenital heart defect or something it would have explained his poor performance and also why he

Dan: There was various kind of fitness records that they'd kept and they had to report against his character.

But it's all building up because, it breaks for an evening and there's a, there's a real bad point, isn't there? What,

Sidey: Well, Markinson

Dan: Mort Markinson.

Sidey: Markinson is really awful. He, he gets dressed up in his full best dress gear.

And you kind of like, oh and then you see him reach for his, his pistol. And he kills himself with the guilt of not being able to protect the Marine under his command. It's too much for him and all the drama

Reegs: the dishonor

Sidey: He kills himself. Yeah, it's grim.

Reegs: And then there's, I can't remember exactly how it happens, but there's there's a double blow for them, isn't there? Because their key, one of their key witnesses, it turns out wasn't even there when the Code Red issue was ordered. So one of the protagonists, Dawson, is in greater trouble.

Dan: That's right, and he's the one that shot over...

Reegs: That's right. so he's being framed even more if you like.

Dan: Yeah, he's being framed even worse.

Reegs: Yeah, and Dawson has also been victim to a Code Red attack himself because it comes out during the interrogation of Kendrick, Jessop's underling, played by Keith Sutherland, that they'd administered, what was it, barracks only? Punishment for like a week or something, you only had water.

right.

And Dawson had been sneaking them food and it had been similarly code redded

for

Dan: right. Yeah, yeah. And just to make the jury gasp and confirm the fact that these code

reds do exist and they're happening.

And it happened here because eventually they make this call, don't they? They know that if they call Jessup to the stand They've got nothing on him.

He can just deny it. He can just say, no, no, it's these guys.

Sidey: Tom Cruise gets pissed, doesn't he? He drinks a bottle of Jack Daniels and gets the idea. I don't know why they didn't have this before, but this is where they're just going to bring in his ego.

And he's like, we'll get him on the stand and he fucking won't, he wants to tell us, like he's so, like, so egotistical and bullish, he'll actually fucking want to tell us what he's done

Reegs: But it's still, it is on a knife

Sidey: edge. Yeah.

Dan: well, they,

it's

Reegs: good because he's throwing his career on the line and he's only a young

Dan: guy. Well, that's it. If, if he, this guy's going for Secretary of State or something

Reegs: Yeah, it's some huge position,

Dan: got a, a huge position potentially coming up. So, he, he knows a lot of people and,

Sidey: I think he knows the judge, doesn't he, pretty well? Because they seem pretty familiar when he's on the stand.

Reegs: Although he does give it, like, makes him call him Your Honor or whatever when he gets all shitty about titles.

Dan: Yeah, it's but there's also that kind of subplot where they say, look, he's made a plane disappear. Jessup, he's, there was a plane that should have left at 11 o'clock and arrived somewhere at like two o'clock.

But all the logs of that flight have disappeared. And they then went to look for ground staff, who might remember and can testify that a plane did land and, and kind of, he could have got off the base earlier than he did, but he didn't want him to get off because he was, he knew this was going, because this is the argument, isn't it?

They said, Jessup goes, no, Santiago was due to be transferred. Yeah.

Papers were signed, he was due to go the next day. And Tom Cruise had noticed that. None of the wardrobe had changed. You know, these guys are, he's leaving at 0500

Sidey: at

Dan: or whatever,

Reegs: That's in the morning. Dad.

Dan: Yeah. AM. Yeah.

Sidey: He also makes a big thing about his order is like the fucking rule, you know, that's the rule of law and he says, well, if you're ordering that this guy is safe, then why, you know, why was he killed?

Reegs: That's what, that's eventually what rattles him enough into launching into his iconic moment, which is coming

Dan: pretty soon. You want the truth? You can't

handle

Sidey: just flat out just says, did you order the, because he's told, the judge tells him so he's going to be fucking bollocked for

Contempt,

of court, but he's, he's in full flow.

He's the, he's got the red mist as well. And he just shouts, did you order the code red? And then he that's, then it's, it all kicks off the full on iconic, you know, you want the truth. You know, you can't handle the truth.

Reegs: the truth!

Sidey: And then, then he fucking really lays it out. And it's quite I think this is where the movie is really good because it does make you think about all this shit, like that goes on that probably.

I'm sure it does go on. And he says,

you know, The reason why you can't handle the truth is because We have to order people to go out and fucking die. You know, and if you can't fucking take an order.

Reegs: you like, the death of Santiago was, but he would have caused the death of many

Sidey: much as you don't like it.

That will save lives. That will save lives. And you don't fucking want to know about all this shit, but we fucking the ones that go to war. You know, and that, and

Reegs: weren't, I mean, they weren't at war. And what were the Cubans gonna do? Yeah. More Americans died that day by their own people.

Sidey: if you like expand it to military, blah, blah, blah, you know, globally.

Reegs: a fucking the stands.

Sidey: You But he's a psychopath, isn't he? And he's got a God complex. just gets up, he just walks off the stand. I'm done, I'm off, see you later. And they're like no, I'm not sure

Reegs: I'm done, I'm

Dan: about that.

Yeah, he's just talked him into a world of trouble because he's talked himself into admitting, actually, that these two defendants were innocent. They were just following orders, his orders, and he is the one that's going to have to face charges of this.

dead marine and they kind of go court marshals and bring him over and he's he's got that face of any powerful person when they're kind of caught and what the fuck is going on you can't do this to me kind of i'm untouchable and slowly their world crumbling around yeah

Sidey: so it's a little bit bittersweet because the guys are still dishonorably discharged.

for failing to protect.

fellow marines, which, yeah,

Dan: Which, yeah, obviously they went

Reegs: It's fair. You cannot,

Dan: The guy died, yeah.

Reegs: Even if it was ordered or whatever you are, I mean, they talk about this explicitly at the movie about what they can and can't say no to,

Dan: You know, it's not like an eyebrow shaving, they

Sidey: Yeah, no, he, the guy died. And there's been, I think, an undercurrent of people giving Tom Cruise shit for not being a proper military man.

And they give him a salute, don't

Reegs: Yeah. Dawson gives him a big

Sidey: Les Dawson, yeah.

Dan: kind of, military,

marine style. Yeah, well, we get through this, it was a huge hit at the time, but did you feel it this time?

Sidey: Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. It's

Reegs: It's still good, isn't it? Yeah. The performances. It's the performances.

Dan: It's a I mean, I enjoy these dialogue kind of heavy courtroom dramas and and these kind of you know Movies, but particularly when you've got heavyweight actors like these

Sidey: house. Well, the writing obviously massively helps because, because it could, it could be really boring, you know, but Sorkin's obviously fucking super talented at this sort of stuff and makes everything really

Dan: The stakes are huge, you know, that's what makes

Sidey: makes it. Bigger

Dan: it's bigger than that. It's like a whole

Sidey: a whole cow. But you've, also, it feels a little bit like... You know, Jack was the man and now it's like passing the baton on to Tom Cruise to your, like, you know, real Hollywood A list kind of two generational thing.

Reegs: I think also, like, it's sort of almost like a comfort watch a movie like this. It's so easy to watch, but the performances are

Sidey: just waiting for that big fucking

Reegs: Everything's told to you really easily. It's easy, you know, it's easy to follow, but there's good themes and yeah. I was a bit, like, when you said you were going to pick this, I was a bit but, got into it? Yeah,

Dan: Oh, I'm

Sidey: Budget was

41 mil, I thought, for that cast. That seems a bit light, but

Dan: But when was it 92?

Sidey: go. What was it, 92? 92. And it made 243.

Dan: There you

Sidey: courtroom drama, I think that's, that's decent.

Reegs: The whole thing about it being set in Guantanamo though, like it being this place where these horrendous things have happened over history because this of course was based on a real incident that happened to a private David Cox I think in 1986 and then they made this film and then obviously the horrendous shit that occurred there in the name of the war on terror you know, twenty, thirty years later.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you've got people like Jessop in charge down there, then you can see how it's gonna go that way.

Sidey: Jack was paid 5 million for 10 days work.

Not bad is it?

Dan: bad.

Reegs: good in this though,

Dan: Did he get an Academy Award for this, or, or a, a nomination or There was some for the film maybe.

Sidey: Don't know, maybe the writing should have really looked that up. But he's great. I mean, he's fucking brilliant, isn't he? Yeah,

Reegs: I mean,

he's fucking brilliant, isn't he? They tried to do that to it, didn't they? Because that's not in

Sidey: know, they tried to do that to it, didn't they? Because that's not in the play. And when it became a movie, the, you know, the studio was like, well, we need a sex scene or we need some love interest.

So they did. He, I think this must be early on in his. Film career. He did write in that scene and Rhino Rainer.

Reegs: It's not actually too bad though, is

Sidey: He's like, no, we don't need that. Fuck that off. He's don't need that at all.

Reegs: In fact, there's one good bit where he, like, she completely undercuts him where, like, he's like on the eve of the big trial, he's like, I know you want to say I'm just a really good guy and, you know, how I've changed and you've got to know me and respect me and all that stuff.

She's like, nah, it's, you just remembered to wear matching socks in the morning.

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: So yeah, her character's good and interesting and Sam Weisman, the Kevin Pollocks are good in it and Nicholson, obviously, in Cruise, absolutely top draw and then obviously Kevin Bacon and, What's his chops as well?

Dan: Others, yeah. JT.

Sidey: Yeah, it's a strong isn't it?

Reegs: It's good.

Dan: it's good. It's good. Check it out if you haven't already and if you have, watch it again.