A Few Good Men

Screening as part of These Go to 11: The Films of Rob Reiner

“You can’t handle the truth” – Col. Nathan Jessep

Nominated for four Academy Awards®, including Best Picture, A Few Good Men is a gripping courtroom drama directed by Rob Reiner and adapted by Aaron Sorkin from his acclaimed stage play.

Tom Cruise stars as hotshot Navy lawyer Daniel Kaffee, defending two Marines accused of murdering a fellow serviceman, alongside Demi Moore as his determined co-counsel. Their case leads to a confrontation with a powerful military code of silence enforced by Col. Nathan Jessep (Jack Nicholson in an iconic, Oscar-nominated performance). The superb supporting cast includes Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Pollak, Christopher Guest, and J.T. Walsh, and the film’s legacy helped inspire other high-profile legal and military dramas, including Murder in the First, JAG, and The West Wing.

Driven by razor-sharp dialogue and moral urgency, the film examines duty, honor, and accountability within rigid power structures and features one era-defining, absolute line: “You can’t handle the truth!”

These Go to 11: The Films of Rob Reiner

Rob Reiner emerged as one of Hollywood’s most versatile and influential directors during a remarkable decade-long run beginning in the mid-1980s. Reiner, the son of iconoclastic author/comedian/director and screenwriter Carl Reiner, transitioned from acting (famously as Mike “Meathead” Stivic on CBS’ All in the Family) to directing in 1984. 

That year, Reiner broke through with the pioneering mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, redefining screen comedy with an absurdist take on rock star puerility. He followed with a string of genre-defining hits: the road trip teen movie The Sure Thing (1985), the nostalgia-fueled classic Stand by Me (1986), the ultimate storybook-story The Princess Bride (1987), and the “I’ll have what she’s having” touchstone When Harry Met Sally… (1989). Reiner continued to defy categorization with the chilling adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery (1990) and the courtroom drama A Few Good Men (1992) for which he received a long-overdue Oscar® nomination (as Producer). Together, these films cemented Reiner’s reputation as a director capable of mastering tone, character, and genre with an unheard-of consistency. 

In many ways Reiner occupies a strikingly similar place in the legacy of American film as that of Frank Capra (It Happened One Night, It’s a Wonderful Life…).  Both function as chroniclers of national character, using popular genres to articulate what America believes about itself at any given moment. Capra focused on an aspirational landscape often by reflecting the child-like innocence of his protagonists. Reiner’s heroes are rarely naïve; they are wounded, ironic, and self-aware with Reiner serving as a post-Vietnam Capra: not as a builder of national myths, but as a custodian of them, revisiting America’s stories after innocence has faded and asking what still remains at the twilight’s last gleaming.

_{1992, 138 minutes, USA, Directed by Rob Reiner, Rated R}