Category: Lisa Eilbacher

AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN

By Marc S. Sanders

You ever feel proud of a character in a movie?  Like you walk out, and you say to yourself, “Well done, Rocky!  You did it!!!”  That’s how I feel about Zack Mayo, the Navy enlisted candidate who has to survive his first 13 weeks of basic training on his way to eventually obtaining his dream of flying jets.  Just as important though, Zack has to mature as a responsible young man with a commitment to caring at least as much for others as they already care for him.  Richard Gere plays the guy who must become both An Officer And A Gentleman.

Director Taylor Hackford goes deep into the bottom of the well to show what makes Zack such a loner.  His Navy enlisted father (Robert Loggia) abandoned him and his mother, and only reenters Zack’s boyhood life once his mother commits suicide. Zack spends time growing up on the Philippine Islands Naval base where he gets bullied while remaining unloved.

Years later, after college graduation, not knowing of any other direction to take with his adult life, he opts to go down the same path of his bum of a father and join the Navy where he’ll perform basic training when he arrives at a coastal Seattle base. The enlisted men do not have a good historical reputation in this area.  Many are known for bed hopping with the local factory girls, and then they relocate to where they are going towards next in their servitude, leaving the girlfriends behind and forgotten.  Zack’s father was one of these guys. The ladies in the area also have a stained legacy.  Many of them will deliberately get pregnant or even lie about missing their period to keep these enlisted men from leaving them.

Sergeant Foley (Louis Gossett Jr, in his unforgettable Oscar winning role) oversees Mayo and his class, specifically warning all of them that these trends occur over and over again.  When he’s not cautioning them, Foley attacks the character traits that weigh Mayo and the others down.  If they had a rough childhood or checkered background, Foley will not hold back.  He has to prepare these men and women for a possible war or a position of captivity behind enemy lines.  If these young folks can endure Sgt Foley’s cruel mind games and unforgiving, hard-hearted nature, then they are more prepared for any worst-case scenario that can come while performing military service.  

Mayo is a leading candidate in his class.  He has the potential to break the record on the brutal obstacle course, and he’s secretly resourceful with selling polished boots and belt buckles to his classmates ahead of bunk inspection.  Not bad.  However, he’s not mature and he doesn’t even realize it.  The first time he completes the obstacle course he sits over on the side, proud of himself, rather than joining his teammates in cheering each other on to finish the job.

Love is also not something Mayo is experienced with. He meets Paula (Debra Winger in a superb Oscar nominated performance) who is ready to love Zack but he’s not ready to open up to her.  Perhaps he never wants to love or commit to anyone to save himself from loss or further abandonment because it’s all he’s ever known.  An Officer And A Gentleman is very good at subtly covering what makes a loner a loner.  

Contrary to Zack’s background is the best friend he makes, Sid Worley, a fellow classmate (David Keith).  Sid is a happy go lucky fellow, but eventually the film shares what motivated him to enlist and how his relationship with a local girl pans out. Perhaps there’s some sense to what Foley has been warning these people about.  

An Officer And A Gentleman is sad at some points and very uplifting as well.  Sometimes it’s hard to watch the encounters that Zack and company must endure during these first thirteen weeks of a committed six-year servitude to the Navy.  The glamour of flying jets can only arrive once you shed away the person you once were by developing maturity, respect, resilience and honor.  

I love the way Taylor Hackford’s film tests Zack.  He’s tested by Paula, by Sergeant Foley and even by his own father.  Can he let go of the drunken whore parties arranged by his dad? Raised by a guy who might have worn the officer rankings and uniform, but now beds the women he picks up in bars only to finish it off with a drunken vomit session in the morning.  

Foley puts Zach to his mental and physical limits after he catches him in violation.  The sergeant then insists on the kid’s DOR (“drop on request”).  It’s up to Zack if he wants to take this seriously or simply quit and remain a loser like his father.

Then there is Zack’s commitment to Paula.  Can he trust Paula will not trick him or let him down, again like his father, then his mother, and followed by his father all over again?  

Richard Gere is sensational at balancing two stories at once.  This remains the best role of his career.  It’s a dynamic, multi layered performance.  First, the physicality he devoted to the role is impressive.  That is Gere doing the obstacle course and cockpit test crash dives in the swimming pool.  Gere is the one doing endless pushups in the mud and running in place with a rifle above his head while Gossett’s character torments him with his abusive yelling and a dribbling water hose.  Gere is also the one riding Mayo’s motorcycle.  The actor is completely absorbed in this divided character.  Arguably, he should have been considered for an Oscar nomination.  

Zack Mayo is not always likable.  The purpose of the film is to discover what is to admire about the conflicted loner who never had anyone to care for him or anyone for him to lend sincerity towards.  If joining the Navy can pull this guy towards a meaningful life that can be purely earned and not cheated or circumvented, then it’s possible to feel proud of what this man becomes.  

An Officer And A Gentleman is now over forty years old. So, it might feel dated. Yet, the traits that make a man and a woman good, honorable, and loving people has never lost their immense value.  If you have never seen this movie, it’s time you did, and if you have seen it, it is due for a rewatch.  

The last line of the picture, depicted in one of the greatest endings ever to close out a film, is “Way to go Paula!”  Allow me to also say “Way to go Zack!”

BEVERLY HILLS COP

By Marc S. Sanders

Who actually wrote the Oscar nominated script to Beverly Hills Cop? Daniel Petrie Jr and Danio Bach, or Eddie Murphy?

Murphy’s lines are delivered so fast and so naturally that it seems impossible they could ever rest on a page. Eddie Murphy is an enormous talent of word play and delivery. I miss this Eddie Murphy. I’m reluctant to welcome the Eddie Murphy of PG related fare of recent years. He just doesn’t look comfortable in that garb.

One of the first R rated films I ever saw in theatres (not THE first, as that honor belongs to the Clint Eastwood classic, Sudden Impact) still holds with its hilarity, and the credit does not belong to just Murphy but the whole cast including John Ashton, Judge Reinhold, Ronnie Cox and even early in career appearances from Jonathan Banks, Bronson Pinchot, and Damon Wayans.

I still haven’t forgotten this theatre experience when I joined my older brother, Brian and his friend Nick at the movie theatre in Ridgewood NJ. Never had I heard an entire packed room of people in the dark on a Saturday night laugh so hard together. It’s likely a moment that impressed my love for movies going forward. Movies could bring all sorts of joy and happiness and escape. Beverly Hills Cop was altogether another thing entirely.

Yes!!!! A foul mouthed cop from Detroit who becomes a stranger in a strange land while visiting Beverly Hills to solve his friend’s murder. That’s a film that’s had a great impact on me. As a writer, director Martin Brest’s film (later to do Midnight Run and Scent Of A Woman) offers a very simple blue print to allow Murphy to run wild. It cuts out a lot of complicated red herrings to just stay on a straight resolution. As Murphy’s Detective Axel Foley (great character name) comes across another development, in walks another great set up.

I compare the frame of Beverly Hills Cop and Eddie Murphy to the first Mission: Impossible film with Tom Cruise. The Cruise film makes a huge oversight. Early on it introduces a huge array of characters for an M:I team and then eliminates them all to hardly be used. It was wall to wall Tom Cruise. He was a producer on that film with much creative control and it felt to me as if he insisted on owning every scene, every line, every moment. It turned me off a little.

Murphy on the other hand plays along with his ensemble. Ashton and Reinhold have great moments all to themselves. I still die laughing out loud as Reinhold tries to subdue a situation by ordering an army of machine gun toting bad guys to lay down their weapons only to be silenced with another round of gunfire. The banana in the tailpipe! Ashton working with Murphy to stop a random robbery at strip joint, and then helping to save him later on from arrest. What about Ashton trying to climb a wall during a shootout?

Then there’s Murphy and Pinchot discussing a weird art piece (“Get the fuck outta here!”). Couldn’t you envision Pinchot and Murphy in another film together?  A shame it hasn’t happened.  (No, I won’t count the dreadful reunion in Beverly Hills Cop III.)

Brest provides great showpieces accompanied by one of the best film soundtracks ever. I will never not listen to “Neutron Dance” by the Pointer Sisters on Sirius XM’s 80s on 8 while recalling this film’s opening scene double rig truck chase. Brest directs a symphonic high energy blend of sight and sound. Plays like an awesome music video. Same goes for Glenn Frey’s “The Heat Is On.” If I ever get an opportunity to visit Detroit, that’s what will be playing in my head.

Orchestrator Harold Faltermeyer’s electronic keyboard deserves much credit as well. His covert, sneaky 5 note tune shaped the Axel Foley character. Faltermeyer only made Murphy even cooler during the heyday of “Miami Vice MTV Cops.”

Beverly Hills Cop remains one of the best films with the longest staying power of the 1980s. It’s a comedy. It’s an action picture. It’s music filled fun with great characters. It’ll always be Eddie Murphy’s best film. I can watch it again and again. I’ll never tire of it.