Movie Review: More than a few good actors fuel ‘A Few Good Men’

“You can’t handle the truth!”

Certain lines of dialogue become so legendary, it’s known immediately which projects they come from. So it is with the sentence delivered by Jack Nicholson in an intense military courtroom scene in “A Few Good Men,” Aaron Sorkin’s play that Rob Reiner brought to film in an effective and involving 1992 movie version that BBC America shows Monday, July 8.

Nicholson plays hard-as-nails Navy Colonel Nathan Jessep, a base commander investigated by several JAG lawyers — portrayed by Tom Cruise, Demi Moore and Kevin Pollak — after a soldier’s death leads to the court martial of two of the deceased man’s peers (Wolfgang Bodison, James Marshall). Cruise’s character, Lt. Daniel Kaffee, has a carefree attitude that annoys the morte studious Lt. Cmdr. Joanne Galloway (Moore). However, his tactics have a usefulness that gives her a certain appreciation of his approach, if not completely.

Still, they have defendants who aren’t always cooperative, posing complications as the attorneys try to get to the bottom of a “Code Red” order that apparently was the cause of the death. Kaffee suspects that Jessep was the source of that command, setting up a battle of wills between the two men that comes to involve Jessep’s counsel (Kevin Bacon) and other officers under Jessep’s oversight (Kiefer Sutherland, “ER’ alum Noah Wyle).

Sorkin adapted “A Few Good Men” for the screen, and while he and Reiner hold to the plot details originally set down by the project, the movie incarnation leaves plenty of room for sheer star power. Cruise plus Nicholson plus Moore still would be a major combination now, and it certainly was when the picture had its theatrical run … with those stars’ presence adding considerable wattage to what might have been considered material that was a bit more dry in other hands.