Word: boots
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...down," says Charles Moskos, a leading military sociologist at Northwestern University. "And kinder, gentler drill instructors are not necessarily creating the kind of force you want to go to war." Although the military denies it, many male soldiers and outside experts also believe that mingling men and women in boot camp--as the Air Force has done since 1977, the Navy since 1992 and the Army since 1994--leads to relaxed standards of physical performance and sexual tensions that diminish boot camp's effectiveness...
...went through boot camp in the 1950s or '60s would recognize the place today. Soldiers-in-training have swapped combat boots for sneakers (easier on the feet), fatigues for gym shorts and T shirts. Instead of running in formation, they run at their own pace, to challenge the speedy and avoid injuring the slower ones. On military obstacle courses they can run around, instead of over, some walls. In some quarters the very phrase "obstacle course" is frowned upon as too harsh. For the Navy, "confidence course" is now the preferred term...
...nine weeks of Navy basic training begin on a luxury bus that takes recruits from O'Hare airport to the Navy's lone boot camp, Great Lakes Recruit Training Command, just north of Chicago. Onboard they watch an 18-min. orientation video with a rock-music soundtrack in which recent boot-camp grads tell the new arrivals that "physically, anybody can get through boot camp," and that it's O.K. to cry. Recruits get a "Blue Card," which helps them deal with stress. The card instructs a recruit to hand it over to a Navy trainer...
...wishes, indeed, that the movie--written by Andrew W. Marlowe and directed by Wolfgang Petersen, who knows his way around both tight spaces (Das Boot) and the more suspenseful aspects of presidential life (In the Line of Fire)--had retained its claustrophobic intimacy to the end. This, however, would have required its makers to forswear a new Hollywood habit of mind, which dictates that no big-time action film can conclude without an orgy of special effects. As Air Force One climaxes, a lot of people fly through thin air on thin wires. Too bad. The stalking struggle between reason...
...handed efforts to coordinate a rescue effort by his Washington staff with his own attempts to set his people free using whatever modest tools (a table knife, a cell phone, a fax machine) come to hand," says Schickel. "One wishes, though, that the movie, directed by Wolfgang Petersen ('Das Boot,' 'In the Line of Fire'), had retained its claustrophobic intimacy to the end." As Schickel notes, "no big-time action film can conclude without an orgy of special effects. As 'Air Force One' climaxes, a lot of people fly through thin air on thin wires. Too bad. The stalking struggle...