Word: gentleman
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN Directed by Taylor Hackford Screenplay by Douglas Day Stewart...
...they shot the novelization instead of the screenplay. An Officer and a Gentleman works more like a paperback page turner than a film intended for the allegedly sophisticated movie audience of the '80s. It is full of bang-on melodramatics and simple, romanticized characters with carefully supplied motivations. Aside from a few delightfully dishonorable throwbacks, we haven't had moviemaking like this since the '50s, and maybe we don't want it. But what a long-denied pleasure it is to make up one's own parodies as the film unreels rather than...
...situation is a classic. Zack Mayo (How do they think up names like that?) is the son of a Navy enlisted man, whose daddy is seen elaborately not loving him in the prologue. To get back at him, Zack (Richard Gere) must become, well, "an officer and a gentleman." He enrolls in Naval Aviation Officer Candidate School, a form of organized flagellation that we are led to believe makes all other brands of basic training look like the vicar's lawn party. Underneath Zack's sullen exterior, the discerning eye can detect "the right stuff," as it were...
Another key aspect of mensch-hood is a certain degree of ambition: it's not enough merely to be a good guy. This is where An Officer and a Gentleman raises some legitimate ambiguities about the pursuit of military glory. Unfortunately, the film's creators do not take the time to explore them thoroughly...
These shorcomings aside. Hackford's rendition of Douglas Day Stewart's story is tasteful and touching. Zack Mayo never would have thought he'd make it into a cockpit neither would his father nor Foley. But he does, and An Officer and a Gentleman will leave you satisfied and humming quietly to yourself...