A Few Good Men (1992) on Netflix
Two Marines at Guantanamo Bay are charged with murdering a fellow Marine. Navy lawyer Daniel Kaffee, who has no trial experience, takes the case with Lieutenant Commander JoAnne Galloway.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb7.8/10321,822 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes84%
Trailer
Plot summary
Private William Santiago dies at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base after he is bound and beaten during the night. Lance Corporal Harold Dawson and Private Louden Downey, the Marines accused of murdering him, are assigned a defense team led by Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, a Navy lawyer known for plea bargains rather than courtrooms. Lieutenant Commander JoAnne Galloway, who wanted the case herself, joins him as co-counsel, along with Lieutenant Sam Weinberg. Santiago had broken the chain of command by asking to be transferred off the base. Dawson and Downey maintain they were carrying out a code red, an unofficial punishment ordered from above, and that they meant Santiago no harm. Against them stands the base commander, Colonel Nathan Jessep, and the Marine Corps machine he runs.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A Few Good Men (1992)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Aaron Sorkin was inspired to write the play by a phone call with his sister, a Boston University Law School graduate who had signed up for three years with the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps and was going to Guantanamo Bay to defend Marines who nearly killed a fellow Marine in a hazing ordered by a superior officer.
- James Woods auditioned to play Jessep, but Jack Nicholson was cast and was paid $5 million for 10 days of shooting, earning $500,000 a day.
- Aaron Sorkin wrote much of his story on cocktail napkins while bartending at the Palace Theatre on Broadway, emptying his pockets when he got home and typing the napkins into a Macintosh 512K he and his roommates had bought.
SPOILER
The Marine hurt in the real "code red" hazing began choking, his lungs filling with fluid as he spat up blood and lost consciousness, perhaps because the gag had been soaked in gasoline; unlike Private William Santiago in A Few Good Men, he made a full recovery.- Tom Cruise said he modeled his performance on Church of Scientology chairman David Miscavige, with whom he is friends, and insisted on using the church's Clearsound sound reproduction technology, which he claimed captured his voice better.
- Five Marines from the real incident filed a lawsuit in Texas State Court against Castle Rock and other Hollywood companies, arguing that Aaron Sorkin took the idea for the story from their case and seeking $10 million in damages; it brought them no compensation.
- Although 200 off-duty Marines were allowed to serve as extras, the U.S. Department of Defense denied the production permission to film at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.
- Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of A+, one of fewer than 60 films in the history of the service to earn that grade.
