Bulwark Takes - A Few Good Men: How “You Can’t Handle the Truth” Became America’s Favorite Lie

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Sarah, JVL and Sonny Bunch take on A Few Good Men — Aaron Sorkin’s courtroom classic about loyalty, law, and the dangerous allure of obedience. They discuss whether Colonel Jessup was ever right, how “Code Red” culture echoes in today’s politics, and why Demi Moore’s character still divides audiences decades later.

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19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Welcome back to the Bullwark Movie Club here on YouTube and Bullwark Plus. Very excited to be talking with my movie friends, Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last, we're here today to discuss a classic, a classic of American cinema, A Few Good Men. Before we get started, I just want to relay some of the backstory of this movie because it's funny and vaguely infuriating.

Aaron Sorkin, playwright, sits down in between shifts at his waiter, job and writes, writes this script down, writes the script, the play for the play, just on cocktail napkins, goes home, types it all up. Then he writes the movie. It's his first play. Before the play is even produced, it gets optioned to be a screenplay. It bounces around for a couple years, winds up with Tom Cruise at almost the height of his movie star powers. He goes into a lull after a little bit after this and then comes back strong. And Jack Nicholson very much at the height of his powers, ends up grossing, I think it was some insane, it's like $260 million worldwide or something like that, which is about $600 million in today's money. Aaron Sorkin, good for him, good for him.

That's all I have to say about that. He does it in a movie where as far as I can tell, nobody walks while talking. No, well, there is, it's so funny that you say this. And Tom Cruise doesn't run. There's, it's so funny. They play some baseball. They play softball while talking. there's there's there's there's there's there's there's it's so funny that you mentioned this because there's a there's a extra on the 4k blue right because i bought the 4k blue right i don't know if you guys know this very very hard to track down this movie at a reasonable price to rent online you can't do it uh you have to buy it and if i'm going to buy it i'm just going to buy the physical because that's you know i don't buy digital copies of things that's not what i do

but the uh but on the on this on the disc there's a special feature where he talks about sending the script to Rob Reiner, who directed. And Reiner was like, all right, we've got this scene where they're just kind of sitting and talking in Tom Cruise's office. And then he's outside talking in his car, first to Kevin Spacey and then to me more. What if, what if you walked and talked to Kevin Spacey and walked out to the car? And that is the birth of the Aaron Sorkin Walk and Talk. Can you believe it?

That's where it comes from. I'm sorry, when does he talk to Kevin Spacey? Not Kevin Spacey. I'm sorry, not Kevin Spacey. Kevin Bacon. Yes, I was, I thought for a second, you were getting your usual suspects. No, no. Because what's his name?

The guy who plays Sam Weinberg is Kevin Powell. Another Kevin. Another Kevin. Too many Kevin. One of the other, one of the other Hollywood Kevins. Too many Kevins. JBL, do you want to explain why we're talking about this movie today? Because I suggested we do it because I feel like it's important to discuss a movie that

is about the chain of command and the code of the military and the weird kind of gray areas that these things exist in. So we're doing this movie today because last week, the Secretary of Defense, not the Secretary of War, that's just his gender affirming pronoun, the Secretary of Defense called all of the flag officers from the United States military together into one room for the first time in our nation's history and basically pretended to be Colonel Jessup. And so that's why we're doing this because we have a movie in the same way that like this is, this is the world we're living in.

Earlier this week, Cash Patel, it was revealed, has been within the director of the FBI, has been giving out challenge coins, his personal challenge coins with his own personal logo that is like a Punisher logo. So the Punisher is a comic book character that was created by comic book writers who were concerned about criminal vigilantism and wanted to sort of take a more skeptical look at the idea of like, what if the Batman was really a bad guy? Like, you know, why do we idolize these people? And now the director of the FBI takes that character to be his personal, his personal avatar. And in the same way, way, this movie and the play, a few good men, have Colonel Jessup as an object lesson in the

dangers of military command and the breakdown of law and order and the rule of law. And the Secretary of Defense clearly thinks that Colonel Jessup is the hero. We can get into the right and wrong of Colonel Jessup here at a second. Let's, Sarah, when I mentioned the movies that we might do this weekend, you, I suggested to, I suggested the siege and a few good men, because, again, same, same kind of area of discussion here. And you're like, I've never seen the siege, which should. It's a good, good movie.

That Denzel? That's the Denzel, Washington, Bruce Willis one, where Denzel is trying to stop Bruce Willis from taking over New York City, becoming warlord of New York City. Um, the, uh, but you said you'd seen this movie a bunch of times. You love a few good men. Um, I remembered loving a few good men. Uh, and I got to say, um, it hit differently. It's probably been, maybe it's 20 years since I've seen it. Or I, I mean, so I'm 45. So like 25. Because I definitely watched it in college. I certainly watched it. It came out in the, the 90s. Came out early 90s. Like 93, 94. or something like that.

All right. So this makes... This makes complete sense, right? So I'm 12. So I certainly see this at a time when I am just being allowed to watch movies like this. I bet I don't see it in the theater. I bet I see it because my parents show it to me at 14 or 15. And it...

I'm certain at the time hit me with... I love a code, man. Boy, do I love a code. Man, do I love loyalty? and boy do I love especially, I mean, 15-year-old-old. HR getting very nervous having the publisher of the bulwark talking about which code make clear that you don't mean you love code red. Well, just calm down a second, you.

Calm down. It's why we keep rotating through video, guys. No, no, no. I have had, I've had these conversations with both of you over the years. And I'm actually quite interested. Now, I know both of you very well. We all have known each other for a super long time. I've actually known Sonny longer than I've known JBL, like, since he was in college.

We've been talking, I've been complaining about Sunny's movie takes for forever. I complained about JBL's movie takes. But because I know them both, I think that they might sit on opposite sides of this movie and who its hero is. And I would say I'm probably somewhere in the middle of the two of them in that I remember there was a book when I was a very young conservative. And it was like, 10 ways you might know you're a Republican. And one of them, one of them I remember was in the end of dead man walking, you still want Sean Penn's character to die. And I remember me being like, yes, that's me.

And one of the other ones was, like, one of the other ones was, you agree with Jack Nicholson's character and a few good men. And I would say, if not agree at a younger. age certainly saw his point. I don't think that I had like a, I'm sure of who the good guy is. And I, like, I know he's a bad guy. And I certainly knew that. But I also thought, you know, when he does the like, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall.

And he does his speech. There's a part of you that's like, well, there's some truth to this. All right. So let's let's explain what's going on in this movie. just in case you you don't remember having you Sonny, can you give us a big boy review? No, I'm not going to do a big boy review. I'm just going to do a plot summary here because

What's a big boy review? It's a bit that we do in our other podcast. JBL's got a whole thing. But I just want to do a quick plot summary here because I think it's important. Again, if you haven't, if you cannot, if you don't want to pay $15 to buy this movie, which I don't blame you, go to your library. Maybe they have it there. This movie's fantastic.

You should be lucky to. be allowed to pay $15 to watch this movie. So live in a country where you can pay, where you got a man on that wall in Cuba defending you so you can pay $15 to buy this movie. The plot of the movie is this. At Guantanamo Bay, a couple of Marines accidentally kill a problem private who was complaining about being stationed in Cuba, didn't want to be there, was a bad soldier, was a bad Marine, was was not able to do the physical requirements. When the, the, the, the, the, the, the, The murder case gets to the JAG Corps. It is assigned to Tom Cruise, who's kind of a callow individual.

He's, you know, he's just making deals all over the place. He's glad-handing. And Demi Moore is very upset about this. She wants him to really buckle down and get to the bottom of this because she thinks there's been a Code Red ordered. Code Red's very illegal. Now, can't do the Code Reds. What's a Code Red, do you ask?

Code Red is basically hazing, the hazing of a junior member of the military to get them in shape. Remember full metal jacket when Gomer Pyle gets beaten by the soap, that's a code red. That's basically a code red. And by beaten by the soap, they mean they put a bunch of, everybody puts a soap bar in a burlap sack and takes turns beating him. Right. With their burlap sacks with the soap at the end.

Yeah, a bag of soap. And that works out really well because Pyle becomes a great, a great soldier who is a credit to his unit. It's a great shot. Isn't that how that his plot arc ends? Yes. Oh, no. He murders his command.

officer and then commits suicide before leaving basic? Yeah. Sometimes these things go wrong. You know, who's to say? But the, so the guy dies. They're on trial. Tom Cruise wants to make a deal with Kevin Bacon, not Kevin Spacey. Kevin Bacon resists at first.

And then all of a sudden it's like, sure, whatever. I'll give them two years. I'll give them 12 years. Well, no life sentence. We want to get rid of this. And it becomes very apparent that there was an order given from higher up. to make this Code Red happen. The Code Red was supposedly authored by a lieutenant

who's played by Kiefer Sutherland in this, who is in one of his great run of like creepy southern psychopaths. He's got a couple of these roles where he just really crushes it. He also in Rob Reiner stand by me. But it goes higher than that. It's not just, it's not just Kiefer Sutherland. It goes all the way up. It goes all the way up to Jessup.

And Jessup, who's played with just absolute magnificent devilish charm by Jack Nicholson, I believe Rob Reiner's instruction to him was, be like the Joker, but more evil? I don't know about that. Because there's a little bit of his Joker in this from Batman, 1989. To be fair, there's a lot of Joker in a lot of Jack Nicholson performances through this period. there's a continuum like running all the way up to the departed really there's there's there's a lot of that uh so then so the case goes to trial and long story short jack nickleson gets up on the stand and says yeah i did it and i do it again fuck you that's my code they weren't living up to my code i wanted

them to live up to my code so we're doing it that is the very basic plot arc here i just wanted to lay all that out because i think it's i think it is important to understand if we want to discuss the actual moral problem at the center of this film, which is, which is, do you, uh, do, what matters more, the law, the orders from the Department of Defense, the president, or your own personal code, JVL. I mean, the law matters the most. And if it conflicts with your own personal code. Then you leave your position.

You don't supplant your code for the law. You say, this is against my code. I'm sorry, I can't do this. I am retiring. What's interesting in this movie is, Sarah, what did you make of the defendants in this film who say, no, we're not going to take the deal. We're not going to take the plea deal. We're not going to plead out for six months because we did not do anything wrong.

We were just following orders. Yeah. I heard that in Nuremberg. Yeah. Well, this is what Kevin Pollock says. That's right. I, so I think I, I kept trying to watch it and remember how I felt about them the first time, because I believe that I loved, especially the Hal character, right?

So the two young men that are accused, one's name is Hal, one's name is Loudon Downey, private first class loud and downy his commanding officer just above him is this guy how and how is the kind of person who talks about the code and and the code that they are taught as Marines and how you live and die by that code and basically everybody because part of this there were so many things that found more interesting than I might have considered when I was like 20 years ago which was this wasn't just Marines versus sort of civilian moral code. It was Marines versus the codes of other American military stripes, right? Like the JAG Corps and the Navy, right?

And to which- Internal Affairs. Internal Affairs, right? And so I found the two of them, I found how deeply compelling, both as a figure of my honor matters here more. And you see, this is, this is a through line in lots of movies in which somebody's going to go to jail for a crime they didn't commit. Someone's trying to get them to make a deal. And there's a specific kind of person that says, I cannot say that I did this thing wrong when I don't believe I did anything wrong. I just followed an order. And that's what I have to do. That is what I was taught. And like,

that is my code as a Marine. And he hates the Tom Cruise character the same way that the Jessup character and other Marines, they are all contemptuous of the sort of Tom Cruise, Navy, less marine serious, like, they look down on them. They were lower class. Yes, that's right. He literally, like, my favorite is when he says, you stand there in your faggedy white suit trying to tell me, whatever, and that like sort of your Harvard mouth and your faggedy white suit.

The writing on this is so fun. So I will say, because there's two things I felt the whole time through. I've now dealt with Aaron Sorkin across a lot of different years and genres. I blame him. Actually, he lays at the center of my blame for why American zennials and elder millennials don't have a realistic view of American government because the West Wing just like destroy while everyone is there to be a perfect public. servant. And they act every day with the sincerity and the moral clarity to steer America right. What about the American president, Sarah? If we just get everybody in a room and talk, it'll all work out. The facile nature to some degree of Aaron Sorkin strikes me so much more

as a grown up now. But again, I've gone through some phases of like loving the social network, but then having to sit through the newsroom, which is the most steaming, self-righteous, smug pile of garbage like any humans ever made. And it's clearly after Aaron Sorkin's kind of lost his mind. And like he's just gone too far down. He's too high on his own supply at that point. But in this, this is early days. One of the things that I love about it is that he, you know who the good guy in the

bad guy is but he makes the bad guy he gives the bad guy a real point and uh and that gives you something real to wrestle with he gives the bad guy a point and he also makes the hero like kind of kind of kind of kind of uh again callow is the word i would use he he is he is like he just wants to he just wants to wrap this up and go home and go on to the next case and that is not that is not justice that is yeah well he's not jimmy stuart right tom Cruz's character is not a Jimmy Stort character. He's not there to he's not Atticus Finch.

He is a hot shot young lawyer who just is like kind of on the make, right? He's doing his time in JAG Corps. Then he's going to get out. He's going to go to a white shoe firm. He's going to make partner by the time he's 35. His dad was a secretary of, uh, uh, was the attorney general, you know.

Yeah. Well, all of, all of Sorkans, man, men, uh, and moral lights have these daddy issues. All right. Let me, can we just jump into the cast here? Because this is the, it is, it is one of these casts that is surprisingly stacked. I had forgotten, for instance, that Noah Wiley has a one, one, essentially a two scene.

He shows up very briefly on the base and then he's in the courtroom with a great, great sequence with Tom Cruise. Or J.T. Walsh, who has one of the weirdest roles in the movie, is there, does Markinson really need to be in this movie? I have, I really want to talk about this particular piece because this is one of the reasons this movie landed worse for me as a grownup. I think that there are two reasons that I'm going to talk about. One is the Demi Moore character and then one is this character of the guy who is supposed to be the moral, like he is the one that Jessup orders to do this. We see him early in the movie telling Jessup, no, right? We cannot do this. We should just transfer this kid who's begging to be trans.

Ferd because he can't keep up with his platoon. He's getting, you know, harassed and beaten up on. Like, let's get this kid out for his own safety. He's the good guy, right? The voice of reason that Jessup goes on to ignore and go in favor of work with Stephen, with Kiefer Sutherland's character to go ahead and sort of go give this, go train, train the young lad by, you know, shoving a rag down his throat and taping him up in the middle of the night, which ultimately leads to his death.

And I think that this idea, so this guy then, so he, he basically leaves the military after it's clear to him that they are trying to cover up this murder. He does this jump scare scene from the back of Tom Cruise's car where he just, it's one of those scenes where Tom Cruise gets in the front seat and this guy, he looks in the mirror and the guys in the back seat, which stayed with me. I remember all of this guy's scenes forever, but as a this time watching it, I sat there going. everything he's doing is not making any sense because what he ends up doing is putting on his full dress blues, putting his nickel-plated pistol into his mouth and blowing his own head off while two marshals sit outside rather than testify. And right before he does that, he writes a note to the kid's parents, the kid who dies parents, Willie Santiago, and says, I'm sorry I couldn't do more for him, which is insane because what he could do for him is get on the stand and tell the truth about

what happened. No, Sarah, you're, you're, what he means when he says, I couldn't do more for him, he doesn't mean that he wasn't able to do more. He, he means he wasn't capable. He was too weak to have done what he knew needed to be done. Right. He could have done it. And that's why he takes, takes the way out, right? It's because he has a second chance, this second chance to show he's, he's, he's so demoralized with himself that he's, he's going to shoot himself, uh, in the room instead of doing the the next like he could show integrity now he's still too weak he's still too weak to do it this is i find this i found this i found this deeply implausible i i'm with i'm totally with you sarah i had actually completely forgotten about the j t walsh character

in this movie and like everything he does makes very little sense to be just on just on a pure plotting level like disappearing then showing up then killing himself like it's it's he he does about two minutes of plot work that could have been handled on a phone call. And that is probably how it should have been done. But I do love seeing J.T. Walsh show up because he is a great actor and he is fantastic. Again, there's so many, there's so many great people in this. We've already mentioned a bunch of them. Cuba Gooding Jr. shows up.

I was just going to say, Cuba Gooding Jr. shows up in a preview of the Tom Cruise Cuba Gooding Jr. Pairing a few years later in Jerry McGuire. Chris Guest. Chris guest. Chris guest as the, I, I literally had to look him up because I was like, who is that? Who, who is like, here or that guy? Zander Berkeley. J.A. Preston. Again, like all these guys are just wonderful actors. You're like, oh, I know that guy from a million, like, you know, maybe you don't, maybe you don't know Zander Berkeley's name or J.A. Preston's name, but you know their faces and you know

that you always love them when they show up on screen. Zander Berkeley, my favorite, my favorite, him showing up in a thing for a minute is in heat where he is Al Pacino's punching bag for a minute because his wife or yeah his is is cheating on him it just just a just like a perfect like kind of like oh crap what have I gotten myself into moment for him I absolutely remembered Noah Wiley from this movie though that is a very pivotal scene the the acting the physical acting of Kevin Bacon walking back to the table and Tom Cruise grabbing the book out of his hand seamlessly as he walks to ask the same question is something and this is where obviously clearly it's an incredibly good movie in part just because so many of its scenes are

imprinted on me but also Noah Wiley in that role goes on then to be in swing kids he goes on to do like a bunch of yeah well I'm gonna make you guys do swing kids wait I can't wait you do yeah um when we get to our nazi kids then we'll do newsies after that right no not newsies Not Newsy. Swing Kids. Swing Kids, good movie. Swing Kids, good movie. Newsies bad movie. We're going to do all our Christian Bale. Newsies is amazing. What are you talking about? I understand they sing, Sonny, and you can't take that. It's not realistic. Singing. Okay. But it was, Noah Wiley is great in this movie. I just follow the crowd at Child Time. And that's, and that is actually, and again, that's just a really well-written sequence there. It's like, that's good courtroom melodrama writing, right? It's vaguely ridiculous, but it also hits all the points you need to.

to hit. Yeah. Sarah, can you talk to me about Demi Moore? I want to hear you about Demi Moore's character. What your beef with Demi Moore is. Oh, no, it's not with Demi. It is with the character that she is playing. And I'd like to ask you guys before I say what my problems are. I want to see if you can either anticipate them or how she strikes you. But I do think I remember always as a young person seeing this movie on the blockbuster shelf for actually we didn't have a blockbuster because I grew up in a really tiny town um so like whatever the local you know movie store was that I would walk around for hours looking at the titles and the covers I was always struck me that the title a few good men was there and that it was um Demi Moore was on there with Tom Cruise right

because I was like well that's not a that's not a man um and uh you know I don't know if someone explained to me that this that was when uh it was a general neutral in a in the way that it was taught what it wanted in terms of a few good men um but of course it shows you who the hero czar on the cover is jack nicholson on the cover yes it's just it what it shows you on the cover is the people designed to have enough name id they'll get people in the seats all right here are three faces you recognize you guys do you guys do the i want to know what you you think of Demi Moore's character before I tell you what I think. Pass.

This is a trap. You just say. Yeah. No, you tell me what I'm supposed to think before I say something and get into trouble about this. Because I like the character. You like the character. Tell me more.

She's a hard. So I like Demi Moore a lot as a screen presence. And she's, she's a weirdly versatile actress. And she's just sort of a hard ass here. And I like that. I don't know. Like, I don't know what else to say. Like, she's, she is the moral center of the movie in ways that I think none of the other characters really are.

And she, she is sitting in the back seat for most of it. But that's also, I think, kind of by design because she doesn't, she doesn't want to be. Like, she, she is there to, to bust, uh, Kathy's, Kathy's chops on this and force him to, to start digging on it. I don't know. Like, I can see a different version of the story where she's the co-counsel and not Kevin Pollock.

Maybe that's what you'd rather. But I don't know, like, again, I'm sure this is a wrong thought, but I like the character and her performance. It's not a wrong thought. I'm willing to be. As to how it hit you, because I would like to tell you how, go ahead. Go ahead. Go sonny.

Oh, I, can I, can I guess what your, what your complaint is instead of saying how I felt about it? Or should I do? Which would you rather? No. No, I want to hear what. What you think of the character? My take on the character is that I think she is kind of hamstrung in that very first opening sequence where she stammers out her reasoning for wanting to be there. It gives all the characters an out to sideline her.

And it gives us the audience an out to sideline her. And I think that I think that kind of undercuts everything else she does in the movie. But that said, I like this is. This is a pure star power movie. It is a movie that is dominated by Tom Cruise on one poll and Jack Nicholson on the other. And she holds her own with both of them, which is no mean feat. And as such, the character works for me just because, again, it is a pure star power. Pure star power play.

I like there's there, the, the, the, whatever, whatever problems and softness there is in the writing is kind of covered up by. how good she is in it. Okay. Interesting. I agree that she is good in that she's doing that. They need her to do a couple things. Demi Moore has a very signature thing that she does, which is that she wells up perfectly. She is a person, she is a woman who can be steely and resolve

and have that shine in her eyes that shows that she cares so deeply that she's welling but not spilling. But here's the thing about how they use her. there's a i was trying to think about it as an archetype that i feel like i've seen a lot of which i guess i would call the moral scold whose purpose in the movie is to help the dude reach his full potential right and so her role in this movie is to help tom cruise see what a brilliant little boy he is and uh to sort of uh chastise him not just morally but also you You know, she is somebody who, they make it clear, has a bit of a crush on him.

And, yeah, she asks him out to go to dinner and she stammers through that. That's a professional dinner. It didn't strike me as crush. He said, are you asking me out on a date? Because people have asked me out on a date. It sounds like you're asking me out on a date. They play with the sexual tension between those two. And so the writing, the whole time. And I guess, I guess this is the part that maybe should. struck me as a grown-up sort of differently than as a kid, where I think just her

presence as a woman made me feel better about it as, that's what I meant about the title cover where it's saying a few good men. I'm like, see, there's a woman in this and she's in the military and she outranks him technically, but she does everything wrong in this movie. And she is diminished at every turn. There is a one of the ways that, and I'll tell you this, one of the reasons that I hated Jack Nicholson's character the Jessup character more this time than I think I did

when I was younger is that it hit me very differently this time when they are sitting in Cuba at the breakfast table and Jack Nicholson says to Tom Cruise so she Demi Moore's character Joe she speaks up about something because she is the one

demanding the answer. She is the moral center of the movie. She is the one who sees clearly from the beginning what is happening here and why it's wrong. And she's scoldy about it. She is scolding Tom Cruise's character into doing the right thing. She is nagging him into doing the right thing. At one point in the early part where she is trying to get him to do the right thing and

she makes a bit of a speech, he turns to her and says, Commander, I believe I'm sexually aroused. And then they go to Cuba together. And Tom Cruise keeps being like, you can ignore her. Yeah, nobody likes her, you know, puts her down the whole time. And then Jessup says, something just occurred to me, Jack. She outranks you. Let me tell you what.

You're a lucky man. I'm paraphrasing because I don't really know all the exact dialogue, but I'm pretty close, I think. She outranks you and you're a lucky man because there's nothing better than a blowjob from a superior officer. And, you know, this is a problem for me because I'm a four-star general. And so until they elect some gal president, I'm just going to have to keep taking cold showers. and she processes this. Actually, she doesn't even press it. You don't even, it doesn't touch her.

She, like, continues to press on him. And I like her resolve in that moment, but this movie does everything it can to diminish her, including multiple of the mistakes that get made at trial, the mistakes that when she says this, and I've remembered this my whole life as an object lesson in not being. too emotional where she says, I object, Your Honor. And he says, overruled. And she says, no, I strenuously object. And she continues to sort of. And afterwards, the Kevin Pollack character admonishes her and makes fun of her and says, oh, well, you if you strenuously object. Okay. Great. Right. They make fun of her for being too emotional. And then she, the way she gets on the case when they don't want her there is that

she goes to another woman, the aunt Ginny of the younger private, and gets signed on. as his counsel. But he almost blows the entire case for them when it becomes clear that he didn't actually hear the Code Red Order. He was told by his pal Hal, which is like a big embarrassment for them in the day of the court. And so Tom Cruise is yelling at her about this. He gets to be this drunk playboy, and she's got to be stern the whole time and try to keep them on track while also being the one who makes all the mistakes that Tom Cruise ultimately has to clean up. With his brilliance, his effortless brilliance. Sarah,

this is a very revealing moment about our relationship. You hate Demi Moore's character because she's a moral scold. And I really like her character because she's a moral scold. And her point is to embarrass the people in the movie into doing the right thing. And I think that's awesome. To shame the people in the. move into doing the right thing. To shame them into doing the right thing.

So let me just push back on that, though. Tom Cruise is a better lawyer than she is, but he is morally bankrupt. And so it isn't that she's like making him into the best little boy. Like he is the best little boy. He's the natural, but he's the one who like does not understand what, what use is it to be the best lawyer if you have no moral center? That's sort of the point. Let me ask you this.

Okay. Let me ask you about the bait and switch they do to her at the end. Okay. So now we can get to the way that the movie ends, the very last line. You are set up with a tension between the military code and the common moral code. And we do not like Jessup because he believes he is above the common moral code. He believes he's above the legal code for which he supplants this own marine code. and he's able to justify it because it keeps America safe.

He thinks he has a higher messianic calling, right? And therefore can justify this treatment of this person because he ultimately made the core weaker with his weakness. Now, at the end of the movie, there's this great, there's actually this great scene between Demi Moore, who is the one pushing on, pushing on Tom Cruise's character. to do the right thing and see that these young men were only doing what they were ordered to do. And it's not their fault. And the Kevin Pollock character doesn't like them. And they have this exchange in the courtroom at one point after everybody else has left. And she says, why do you hate them so much?

And he said, because they picked on a weaker kid. He couldn't run very fast. So they beat him up. And then they killed him. And I think. And he says, at an earlier point, it's a great line where he says, because I think that they are, I think that they were told to do it, and I think they should go to jail for the rest of their lives, right?

He holds them morally culpable for following these orders, which were morally wrong. Then he turns to her and he says, why do you like them so much? And what does she say? What does she say? She says, she says, because, did you guys not just watch this movie? She says, because they stand on a wall and they tell you, no one's going to hurt you tonight. And I said, huh, that sounds awfully close to Jessup and the justification for why he demanded that the code red was given. And then finally, at the end of the movie, when Hal is said, they get off on the murder charge, they get off on the conspiracy charge. but they are um what is it called they are they are conduct on becoming a marine they get they get found guilty of conduct on becoming a marine and they are dishonorably discharged from uh the the marines

and the military which is the one thing they didn't want the whole reason they went to court and fought it was because they didn't want to be dishonorably discharged because they don't know how to do anything but be Marines but when the younger guy who clearly can't do any if he's so young he's like 18, and he looks to his superior officer, Hal, who's probably 21 or 22, and he says, well, how can they do this? We just heard them say, Jessup ordered the code red. How can they say to us that we're guilty? And Hal says, and this is the moral of the story that we're in, because we should have looked out for Willie, because our job is to protect people weaker than us, right? And so Hal understands at the more that that they failed the moral question she doesn't pass the moral

question well she's just phrasing but she is phrasing the same moral point in a different way right they stand on the wall to protect us the the us the general us the weaker us right i like i don't think that these are in uh they're intention but i don't think they're diametrically opposed okay necessarily i could see that i could see that and i think if you have haven't watched the movie really recently. It's maybe tough for you to follow, like, this, this part of the conversation exactly. But I just, I guess I felt like for her character, she gets hung out to dry at every turn. Uh, and it made me annoyed for her. This is just screenwriting, though. She is the supporting character. She is there to make Tom Cruise look better.

This is, this is her whole point of, of being. Same with Kevin Pollock's character. Kevin Pollock's character is the same exact way. He's there to make Tom Cruise look better. It's the same with Kevin Bacon's character to a certain extent. Yeah, I know, except they explicitly give, they give Pollock's character. Like, he says it. It's like, it's given to him. He's like, I have no responsibilities here.

He doesn't want to be there. She's the striver. She desperately wants to be there. She is fighting for her place the whole time. And so she is in doing that sort of constantly apologizing when she puts a foot wrong. wrong. And look, I don't want to make the whole thing about this. Okay, JVL, get your eyes down. You want to know? Like, you ask me what I thought. You asked me what I thought. And I will just say that I found that character much less compelling, not because of her performance, but because of the way that it is written. And this like, it might be because I'm reading Harry Potter right now. And Hermione is a little bit. Or Hermione. is a little bit of this character. We're like, yes, she's the smartest one,

and she is often morally correct, but also she's always nagging them to do the right thing. You're not far enough in. Hermione is like the true hero of the whole series. Maybe later. Maybe you're, I'm, yeah, go ahead. JBL has a whole Hermione thing. The, um, the, I, I want to just jump back very,

this is, this is almost beside the point. But you, you mentioned the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, And it's really interesting to go back and read some of the reviews at the time. Both Siskel and Ebert both said, this movie doesn't have a romance in it. And Siskel found it. Siskel found that refreshing. Ebert was like, where's the romance? And it is, it's a fascinatingly, it's just a very different take than you had.

And this is, and so I kind of split the middle again here where I, like, it's very clear in that sequence where she is asked him to dinner. that there is like a little bit of tension there. And it is also never followed up again in the rest of the movie. It is not that is they there is never any point in the film where I'm like, those two are going to kiss. Like that just never that that does not, that doesn't really happen.

I don't think. Yeah. There is the part where they're both in the rain. I actually thought, I thought it might happen. He's like pulling up. She's walked out. Where he's driving shit faced by the way.

He's just, he's just, he's just, The rain is pouring, and he's just hauling along in his car hanging out the window, like, hey, we're going to go do the trial now. Come on. It was so funny that he shows up so drunk, and then they immediately put him in his car, although I got to say it was fun to see D.C. a little bit, right? Like the row houses, like exactly like the row houses here. Like, that really is downtown. But the part where they are both in the rain, and he's chasing her down with the. car. And the cars, by the way, why are all the cars? This movie was supposed to be set in the

late 80s, but the cars all look like they're from 1975. Like the streetscapes with the cars on them. Okay. Still looked like that in the late 80s. Did it really? His car was ridiculous for an 80s car. Didn't look like the 80s at all to me. Um, anyway. He had, he had like a vintage muscle car, though, right? He had, he had like a rich kid car is what he had. Is that what that was? I think so. wasn't it like a Mustang or something? I don't know. I'll have to look it up. I don't know.

I thought that that might. They do like get them both very drenched and he's chasing her down and you do think there might be something there. But they do just cut it. Like there's a hard cut there and goes to black. And so they clearly made a decision not to make it overtly romantic and just to leave it with like a smidge of tension. Can we talk about Pete Higgseth and Colonel Jassup?

Sure. Because this is the thing that sticks out to me. is that we now have, at the head of the American government, the Colonel Jessup ethos, which boils down to Mike makes right. I am the commander, and so I am allowed to give the code red, right? The code red is only good or bad because I say it. If I don't say the code red, and one of my underlings, does it. Then the code red is a bad thing. But because I have the authority, I am the one who

decides. And it, there is this puffed up. I mean, I got to say, he, Jessup talks about, you know, all this stuff, you know, I'm on the front lines. I'm eating breakfast, a thousand yards from people who want to kill me. Dude, you're in fucking Cuba. It's sunny. And we see. And we see where you eat breakfast. It's beautiful. You have the ocean behind you. You are being served on very nice silverware and you have a steward who brings you coffee in a silver, a silver coffee pot. You're not in the fucking trenches at for done. This is this sense that like, you know, oh, I am uniquely on the wall. And if I don't go up there and beat this kid up, then, you know, the whole thing crumbles down because it's all on me. This is the kind of

grandiose myth-making that authoritarians always tell themselves. They see themselves as like the historical star of some gigantic apoccal play. And I don't know, this is

what Hexeth is don't know. You know, we're going to let you war fighters go out and be warlike warriors doing war stuff. And nobody's going to second guess you because they don't understand how hard you get it. And then he's like, hey, here's a video of how somebody sat in a bunker and pressed a button on the mouse to blow up a speedboat.

That's, that, the reality is far, far, uh, away from how these guys see themselves. And I think that really puts the lie to all of this code stuff is really about creating permission structures and rationalizations for them to be able to simply do whatever they want. it's just will to power. Sarah, can we get, can we get your thought on this? Because I have a slightly controversial thought that is going to get me yelled at here in a minute. And I want to, I want to, I want to, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to, I've been waiting for this the whole time.

I've been waiting for you to defend. We did 50 minutes so that you could go and defend dress up. All right. Because this is where I think I'm between the two of you on this. Because here, I'm going to say, I mean, so what is, what's the code that we hear over and over again from these guys, right? It's unit, core, God, country, right? That's what they say, you respect your unit, you respect the core, respect God, you respect country. And what is interesting about all of this is the, it's both respecting the chain of command,

but also keeping the unit integral, keeping it safe and keeping it on mission, right? That's the whole point of what they're, what they're arguing for here. I would argue, I would argue that this code, this code that places, there's no, there's no president in this. There's no, there's no higher command. It's unit core, God country. I would argue that this idea would actually insulate Jessup from the authoritarian type pressures of a Hexeth or a Trump in a way that, frankly, Tom Cruise's character might not resist. Tom Cruise, just a career guy, just looking to move up the ladder.

He doesn't care that much. These guys, they have a mission. They see themselves as out there with a sacred duty, a sacred duty. I will say, I will say, look, the whole generals in front of Hegsseth thing was so embarrassing for everyone involved and Hegsets they're gonna F-A-F-O like just embarrassing

embarrassing for everyone I was relatively heartened by the fact that the generals all just sat there like what the fuck man oh yeah there was not there was not clapping there was not cheering this was not a political rally this was not

they were just like okay we're here we're doing this I think personally that Jessup would Jessup has his problem. Jessup makes some mistakes. Jessup doesn't do all the right things. I think he would resist this sort of thing from Hegsef or Trump much better than almost any other character in the movie

except for maybe to me more. Is it because of his code or is his own narcissism? But either way. I think he would only resist if what Trump was telling him ran contra to what he wanted to do. Ran contra. I don't know. I mean, we could get into a lot of different hypotheticals here.

Jessup believes that he should be a law unto himself and that the Constitution does not bind him. Yeah, and that's what Trump is based. And that's what Trump is offering the men and women of the military. We will allow you to be laws unto yourselves. You do not need to worry about whether or not the orders to blow up the speedboat in international waters are lawful or not? Right. Well, yeah, okay. But what does he also say? He says, you serve at the pleasure of the president, which I don't think, I don't think Jessup would agree with, right? No, he makes it pretty clear that the only person who could, would be above

him to give him sexual gratification as a president. That's my one, my one controversial thought here is that I do think they would be slightly more insulated. But maybe not. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm just wishcasting. I mean, I think that I sort of agree with JVL here. I think that that part of what Jessop wants, right, is he's like, I'd just rather you said thank you and went on your way. And that's sort of what he wants. He wants to be left alone to run things as he sees fit and not have, have neither the law nor the common moral code apply to him. And I think that's what's interesting about the movie is that I think that Jessop has.

There's a couple things that I think he has right in the movie that make him a good, complicated villain and not just a one-dimensional bad guy. And one of them is that the speech he is giving at the very beginning is when he's being told by Markinson, well, we should transfer this kid. He keeps writing letters saying, please get me off the base. And you hear one of those letters right up top. And it is just the kid explaining. all the ways in which he is failing to meet the standards of the Marines.

And so, like, he should have probably been gone. He didn't either be, you know, trained up or trained out is what you do with these guys, which, by the way, just the whole premise of the movie watching it as a grown-up, there's a little bit of me that was like, I don't know. I was like, now I'm just much more sensitive to the overwrought nature of sarkanisms. But he, when he says, maybe it's. our obligation, not to just transfer him, but to train him. And I'm like, yeah, that's true. And the idea that there are sort of ways in which, uh, that are not, let's say, book authorized,

but that there is a kind of social- You're going to go full whiplash, aren't you? No, I'm not. Well, so I was going to, I do keep meaning to bring this up in terms of whiplash, in terms of tar. I do have a slight problem with the recognizing always that these people are supposed to be the villains when they are just trying to achieve excellence. Because I do think we should all be trying to achieve excellence. But we probably shouldn't do it by like, what is the line between emotional torment and, you know, just trying to make somebody the best that they can be? there's there's a that's the whole that's the whole thing be all you can be uh and so that original thing where he was like we need to train him is because the code reds were clearly given all the time the only reason that this one became a problem is that when they put the rag in his

mouth this kid had an undiagnosed coronary problem likely there's kind of a thing around this where when the rag got pushed too far down his throat he asphyated um but like other people testified like oh they got code reds like everyone took turns punching the guy in the arm um and so it's an accident that he died um and it is an accident that comes from this higher up order that wasn't go murder him right like jessip is not so evil that he's saying go kill the kid like jessup's evilness is that he believes he has an obligation to train him not just transfer him and so why don't you and then he puts it on uh keifer sutherland's character you get this guy up to speed. That's what we do here. And I can rock with that part. As a military leader,

the idea that he goes to the person above him and says, no, your job is to make this person fit for service, to make him worthy of his comrades, to get him up to snuff. That doesn't seem crazy to me. The crazy part is that when he does die accidentally, there's two things. One, the way, the code read that they give him in particular, like it's described by other people in ways that are there are some that sound like okay this is the kind of thing dudes do to haze each other and it's bad

and we don't like it but it's not life threatening or traumatizing or I don't know it depends on what your tolerance for trauma is I guess but I guess you want it to be kind of high for people in the Marines like I don't know so I could buy that part right like everyone punching the guy in the arm

didn't send that now the one guy who wasn't showering enough and so they scrubbed him down with steel wool and brillo pads, that sounds psychotic. And this particular Code Red also was psychotic, right? They're like taping the rag around his mouth. They're taping up his legs. And so I agreed with the Noah Pollock character where I was like, I both believe they were told to do it and I think they should go to jail.

Like I sort of thought that was one of the most succinct moral lines about what had happened in the movie. Question here. Should if, if Jack Nicholson, if Colonel Jessup had just said at the beginning, yes, I ordered it. I ordered the code red. Punish me. Is that the correct moral response, Sarah? Yeah. Right. Like if he if he said, oh my God, a kid died because of this, it wasn't my intention. Instead of trying to cover it. Instead he falsifies evidence. Instead he falsifies evidence, right? That's that's where it becomes, you know he's, to me, you know he's a villain. when he says the thing to Demi Moore, which is grotesque, and an attempt to humiliate and demonstrate his own power there. I also, but here's, I have a question back to you, because JVL is trying to make this. And at one point, Tom Cruise does the same thing.

He says, we're in peace time, right? So General Jessup is acting as though they are in, in deep, in fighter mode. Cuba is about to send people in, 57 Buicks across the fence. Come the fuck on. Sorry. Well, I guess, Sunny, does it make any difference to you in how he trains people the fact that it was peacetime versus wartime?

Because you can see how a military commander says to himself, like, my job is to act like we're at war all the time. Yeah. And to train these guys to be in war. I would not necessarily downplay being on an act. military, you know, border there. Cuba is not Canada. It's not, it's not the same thing. I agree that it's not, you know, it's also not, uh, hungry in, uh, in

1956 or whatever. But the, but the, look, I, I am, I, having grown up in the military and having been in this world, much of my life, I am a little more, I give a little more leeway to these guys to train people up the right way. Still can't break the law, obviously, still can't do the code reds. You do the code red, you accidentally kill a guy, you got to pay the price for that. That is 100%. So one of the things that the Russian army has done a lot on the front in Ukraine, where they

are involved in an act of war, is that they take soldiers who aren't performing very well, and they bring them to the center of camp, they get everybody to come around in a circle, and they put their head bits between two cinder blocks and then they slam those cinder blocks with a sledgehammer to blow their heads up to train them up and to help make sure that everybody else understands. Is that okay?

These are psychotic and sane things. That sounds like an over-the-top reaction. If that had happened in this movie, I don't think anybody, I don't think we'd be having this conversation. They didn't kill a guy. What I'm saying is these are these are sociopathic rituals, which have nothing to do with actual performance, right?

Like, oh, you want to help the guy learn to be a better runner? Have him trained at altitude, right? We're going to go out and work on intervals. We're going to do some extra run. That ain't what this is. This is, we are the people with authority. We like exercising that power over people all the time. You know, we get Jessup doing those power games, not just with Demi Moore.

When he does it to Markinson, when they have that first meeting, and he, like, calls the, you know, calls his secretary and get the president on the line. And the kid's like, yes, sir. And he's like, no, belay that order. Right. And the kid's eyes like, yes, sir, right? By the way, that is, that is a what is one scene with Josh Molina. Josh Molina.

Later on, it goes on to be on West Wing. Sorry, go ahead. But this is the, you know, this is all of that is. And all the shit about law, well, that's how we make the best soldier. No, what fucking isn't? that's not how you make the best that is just looking to make excuses for people who like doing psychotic shit

that has nothing to do with performance nothing okay I disagree slightly I got to realize I just I slightly disagree I don't totally disagree but I think like the code reds that they're talking about are

inhumane but like have you ever watched like Band of Brothers right like the or even if you're on a sports team like when you're failing they make you run till you drop like the the football players that die dropped out of heat exhaustion because they're being pushed really hard um you know and because somebody didn't know they had like an underlying health condition of some kind uh and i think that there's there's a like tension there's a like tension there between how do you pursue excellence? How do you push people to their limits so that they can be the best version of themselves? And I got to say, if you were in any sport, you will hear coaches or you will heal military leaders or you will hear the world's best musicians or whoever it is talking about how you devote yourself in this way. That's incredible. And so like band of brothers. I had high school and college sports too. We didn't do that shit. That's what you're not trying to be like at the absolute peak of your but like of and this like okay.

What they should have done. So, like, this is, the, the movie presents, presents choices you've got to make to go along with the movie. But if you're not going along with the movie, like, the right thing to do was for Jessup instead of having a power play to be like, this kid doesn't want to be here. He's clearly not measuring up. Go home. Like, that's just like the normal way to handle this. There was a solution in there that was both humane, that did not compromise the military. It would make the unit better.

Sure, exactly. If what you care about is making the. unit better and not exercising your power. And I think, I think that that's probably right, right? That was just a normal thing to do when I think that in the actual military, it is what they would do. Somebody is requesting a transfer. They wouldn't keep them there just to, you know, teach them a lesson.

They'd get them out of there because this person's a liability in all kinds of ways. I do that. Look, I think Jessup, the argument Jessup makes that if we just send a failure to somebody else that puts somebody else in danger is not an uncommon opinion in the military, I think. Well, that kid shouldn't have stayed in the military. I mean, if you listen to the thing, like, he just needed to not be there anymore. He needed to watch it. You got a million and a half people in the military and having one substandard private

sitting in the Richmond, Virginia armory, shuffling papers, putting people in danger. Like, again, I'm sorry. This is all just self-pathologizing by people. who believe that everything depends on them because they're so special. I'm like, you're not, dude. Colonel Jessup, you're not special. So I agree with that. But I also think, and like the military does run on certain standards, right?

So I'll tell you, here, we want to just share on popular opinions. I don't know that this is unpopular or not. But one of the things that, that Hggseth keeps talking about in terms of he's like, we're going to have one standard and everybody's got to meet them, men, women, whatever. I agree with that. I've never liked the idea that they lower standards for women in the military and have two different ones. I think it's a mistake. And I think that it creates for women a second class citizen status because they don't have to meet the same standards.

I think they would be given more respect in the military. Even if it meant fewer women were in it because they have to meet like these higher level of standards. I think having high standards is good. What if the standard is height? like the standards have to have something to have something to do with the actual job and so being able to run and do push-ups and pull-ups is part of part of i understand that you have 70% of casualties in the ukraine war are i understand you have guys who fly the drones and whatever i understand that but like i you still you still that's the reality of modern warfare job that look the reality of modern warfare is again 70% of casualties in the in the in the Ukraine, Russia, war are from drones. This idea, though, that we don't have to train and that we shouldn't train the American military to be better than everybody else.

That's not what I'm saying. Argue with what I'm saying. Which is that, like, your standards should be applicable to the actual things that matter in the job. Not these weird self-mythologizing. Well, you need to be able to do 150 push-ups or they have to be six feet one. We just thought a war in the desert where people had to. live in the desert and walk and run in the desert in ways that, like, was very challenging

on their bodies and that they had to be trained for. And we're never going to do that again, right? This is, we're having no more wars. We're an isolationist country now. I don't know that that's true, J.B. I don't think that's true at all. Yeah. I mean, that's what the president has promised me.

No. Well, how much faith do we have in the president keeping those promises? A lot. To me, the problem with Heggseth and the way that he does this is not the idea that there shouldn't be like he's right in my opinion about there should be standards uh what he is infinitely wrong about as part of it is a kind of uh stolen valor on his part right he is so desperate he like to this is where the pathologizing i do think for heggseth he is um you can always tell the insecurity of these people the the sense that he has and that he's always had that

that he, like the inferiority complex that plagues Pete Hegseth is just so clear. He always needs a hotter wife and he needs to stand in front of these generals and tell them what's what and tell them he's, because if there's one thing Hegseth has going for him, right? He doesn't have, he's not smart. These generals are probably quite smart, but he is physically fit. And so he wants to make them reflect the things that he's good at and that he values. And he wants to be able to stand up there and say, we got to get rid of woe.

and we've got to get rid of DEI. And that is different, right? He's a buffoon. He's a cartoon. He is not earned the right to do this. He's only up there in that role because Donald Trump needed a lackey. And so for those generals to be told by this lackey what these things are, Rob's like embarrasses the entire military, right?

So that doesn't mean that Hexeth can't ever say anything. that is correct in some way. But, like, he is, nobody should listen. He hasn't earned any of it. He hasn't earned anything to be in that role. Which, again, kind of brings me back to my point that I don't think anybody listening to him on that stage cared what he said. I just don't think they, I don't think they put any stock whatsoever in him or his is nonsense, which I find heartening, frankly. My point on standards wasn't that we shouldn't have standards, but that standards should have something.

meaningful to do and not be about like narcissism and outmoded views of what jobs are. That's all. All right. Well, this is a bit of fun. I feel like we got a little off track. Can we just say one more nice thing about this movie, which is that it is a great DC movie. Sarah, I think you mentioned this very briefly, but it is a great. It is just fun to watch them drive around on the streets of DC.

go to the bridges of D.C. I like a good D.C. movie, and this really captures nice parts of D.C., which I like. Well, especially because they do a lot of shows that are supposedly set in D.C. that clearly are not shot in D.C. And this one was very clearly shot in D.C. Can we say one other thing? It's a little macabre. Jack Nicholson is 88 years old.

We are not going to have him around for forever. We should appreciate him as an actor, what we have him, because he's something else. He's great. There was this whole second wind of Jack Nicholson from like, I guess around Batman, right, 88 to the departed, about 18 years where like it's like a whole second act of his career, maybe even third act. A third act, yeah. Which is like the part that I grew up watching him in, you know, this as good as it gets, all sorts of other fun stuff. about terms of endearment or yeah i'm really feeling this like having lost robert redford and like thinking like oh god we're going to lose jack nicholson too like there's a lot of great

leading leading men there's a lot of that coming there's a lot of that coming in the next five or ten years here i don't know i i think about this a lot i feel like more and more people who we grew up with are dying and i think that's just because we're getting older and the that can't be it and the spectre of death is looming over us yeah that can't be it No, it's just dumb luck. Perpetual basis. I don't know. I feel like we're all, we're all headed out soon. When Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, like those two are still kick in.

They're like, they just made a Netflix movie. I was like, click. Yes, I'm going to watch Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda just talk about murdering people. Sure. Did they make 80 for Brady? Were they both in 80 for Brady? I think so. Was that the Tom Brady movie?

Did you, you didn't watch the Tom Brady? old lady movie and didn't shirley mclean just pass like a year ago did shirley mclean buy steal magnolias think she's not just fabulous oh i love shirlea i'm gonna effort that while you wrap us up no she's 91 years old oh thank god she still kick him thank god i'm wrong let's let's end on that happy note shirley mclean still with us at 91 all right uh thank you thank you Thank you guys. Sarah, JBL. This was a lot of fun, a little bit dark. And we'll be back next week with another episode of the Bullwark Movie Club. Make sure you hit subscribe, like on YouTube, et cetera, so we can keep doing these. It's a lot of fun. And hopefully, hopefully it would slightly less dark next time. I don't know. Maybe we could do, can we do Schindler's list or something? That would be margin call. Margin call. Another Demi Moore one. I'm trying to remember her character in that. She's a chief compliance officer, I think, at the firm. Is she a moral school?

Yeah. Compliance. No. She's not. No. No. She, in fact, is one of the people who's like, we can all look the other way here. Let's go for it.

All right. All right. We'll see you guys next week.