There is always something to learn from war movies. It helps in knowing about two sides of the same person. One of-course is good and other not so good. I always believed that there is no such side as bad, the thing is that the other side is not that much good. War movies have always attracts towards essential part of a soldier i.e to follow the order irrespective of its consequences. However, what should be criteria for following the order is a question to be asked. Whether seniority should be a criteria to follow order or Junior soldier's own consent and understanding of a situation be a criteria, is a debatable question. The answer lies in Tom Cruise's A Few good men.
A Few good men is a movie directed by Rob Reiner with excellent massage. Military has tradition of punishing the soldier off the record, which is called as code red. In India it's called as Blanket Parade in which other soldiers punish a culprit, who has done some mistake at critical time in a mission. This mistake is generally related with forgetting one of the episode of the mission or some minor mistake which soldier often repeats. It does not include disobeying the order of the senior as for that there are punishments such as court marshal. This court marshal is of the type, where everything follows according to military rule. However, code red is nonjudicial punishment given to the soldier.
Code red and similar kind of punishment includes hitting a culprit soldier by a group of soldiers, putting blanket on him It also includes ragging at personal level with the permission of the authority. The military consider it as OK, since there is common thought that it makes improvement in the soldier.
The whole situation is beautifully explained in the movie with Tom Cruise starring as a lawyer who has responsibility to save two soldier who executed code red on a soldier named William Santiago. The conduct of code become severe when Santiago got dead. These two soldier thinks that they have done nothing wrong in giving code red to Santiago as they simply followed the order. So Tom and his team files case and search for real culprit who gave the real order. Their fight happens with a arrogant colonel who is
powerful and is misleading the trial starred by Jack Nicholson. Curiosity and suspense is equally maintained in the movie till last. Conversation between Tom and colonel who framed the two soldier on the charges of murder triggers the fight. Egos, ethics and human nature is equally described in the movie. Movie holds nerves to the most of the time. Dialogues with eye contacts between Tom and Colonel are great. So it simply becomes a must watch if you missed it when it actually got released in 1992. Don't forget that you cant handle the truth.
