“You can’t handle the truth.”
Join Ian & Liam for our 313th episode as we step into the pressurised courtroom, moral brinkmanship, and razor-sharp dialogue of Rob Reiner’s A Few Good Men (1992). Button up the dress whites, take your seats, and prepare for a film obsessed with duty, power, and the stories institutions tell themselves to survive.
This week we discuss:
- Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue as a weapon — rhythm, repetition, and confrontation. Is this peak Sorkin, or the moment his style becomes unmistakably dominant?
- Tom Cruise as Lt. Kaffee — charming, evasive, underestimated. Is this Cruise’s most interesting performance precisely because he starts behind the power curve?
- Jack Nicholson’s Colonel Jessup — operatic, terrifying, magnetic. Does the film become his the moment he enters it?
- The courtroom structure — how the film drip-feeds information, builds pressure, and engineers one of the most famous climaxes in cinema history.
- The ethics at the heart of the story — where does responsibility lie: with the men who carried out orders, or the system that created them?
- Ian talks about criticisms of the ending and if they're reading the film correctly
- We explores how masculinity functions in the film — honour, obedience, pride, and camaraderie
- The supporting cast — Demi Moore’s steely professionalism, Kevin Bacon’s moral slipperiness, and who almost got Kevin Pollak's role
- That scene — inevitability versus surprise. Does the famous monologue work because it’s shocking, or because it feels unavoidable?
- The ending — justice served, or merely order restored? What actually changes once the truth is out?
- And finally, whether A Few Good Men is the Best Film Ever — or simply one of the most watchable, endlessly quotable courtroom dramas ever made.
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