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alastaircraig 's review for:
A Few Good Men
by Aaron Sorkin
Aaron Sorkin is a phenomenal writer, but as with any human being, he has his limitations. This has become regrettably clear of late with The Newsroom: a show that spent much of its runtime brushing uncomfortably against those personal boundaries. His treatment of his women characters was troubling in a seemingly oblivious, unconscious way. Meanwhile, the "here's how it should be" moral high ground that worked so wonderfully in The West Wing felt progressively preachier the further it stepped from the Oval Office.
The Sorkinesque hallmarks that felt out of place in that show are far more at home in A Few Good Men, the 1986 play that showed just how devastatingly sharp a storyteller he can be, for good and ill, within his narrative comfort zone: a high-stakes, male-dominated field full of moral conviction.
Within the military court martial setting, talk of honour and duty feel 100% sincere. Potential melodrama gives way to straight-up drama. It becomes far easier to imagine these hyper-functioning, almost presciently-witted characters existing beyond the page. And the humour - of which there is a lot - positively sparkles in a world designed for no-nonsense ceremony.
I have not seen this on stage, nor the film adaptation. I didn't envision any of these characters as Tom Cruise. Heck, until it came up, I had no idea "you can't handle the truth" came from this script. As a pure piece of writing, this is a real accomplishment: admirably focussed, tremendously funny, and surprisingly inventive in its sparse, cleverly-chronology-hopping stage direction.
This stands proudly alongside The West Wing as an example of why Aaron Sorkin is so beloved when he gets it right - and why critics hold him to a higher standard when he gets it wrong.
The Sorkinesque hallmarks that felt out of place in that show are far more at home in A Few Good Men, the 1986 play that showed just how devastatingly sharp a storyteller he can be, for good and ill, within his narrative comfort zone: a high-stakes, male-dominated field full of moral conviction.
Within the military court martial setting, talk of honour and duty feel 100% sincere. Potential melodrama gives way to straight-up drama. It becomes far easier to imagine these hyper-functioning, almost presciently-witted characters existing beyond the page. And the humour - of which there is a lot - positively sparkles in a world designed for no-nonsense ceremony.
I have not seen this on stage, nor the film adaptation. I didn't envision any of these characters as Tom Cruise. Heck, until it came up, I had no idea "you can't handle the truth" came from this script. As a pure piece of writing, this is a real accomplishment: admirably focussed, tremendously funny, and surprisingly inventive in its sparse, cleverly-chronology-hopping stage direction.
This stands proudly alongside The West Wing as an example of why Aaron Sorkin is so beloved when he gets it right - and why critics hold him to a higher standard when he gets it wrong.