Demi Moore once again steps forward to volunteer as sacrificial lamb in the ongoing struggle for women's rights, always provided of course that she is promised to come out on top in the end, and is obliged to betray no speck of pettiness, no hairline crack of frailty, no whisper of self-doubt, no twinkle of humor, no trace of humanity, along the way. Indeed her most, if not only, certifiably lamblike moment is her literal shearing (to a big rock number by The Pretenders in the background). And she does not actually submit to this, as she had to do to the appliquéd "A" in The Scarlet Letter, but instead she does it to herself of her own free choice, and with the same grim-jawed aggressiveness and dagger-eyed determination with which she publicly doffed her clothes in Striptease. Her purpose in so doing is to knock down all barriers between herself and her all-male comrades in Navy SEAL boot camp ("The most intensive military training known to man" -- to say nothing of woman), to which she has been admitted as a "test case" with the potential to change and to shape national armed-services policy for future generations. That's all. She does not let up in this barrier-bashing until she has waived her rights to a lower standard of performance than that of her male counterparts, has grimaced her way through a grueling regimen of sit-ups, pull-ups, and one-armed push-ups (undoubtedly made more difficult by the weight of those croquet balls on her chest), has moved into the same barracks with the guys, and has taken their same kicking-around and punching-out from the hard-ass drill instructor (Viggo Mortensen). All of this paves the way to her unofficial and unceremonious graduation ceremony when she picks herself up out of the mud, drooling blood, and declares her equality via the bring-the-house-down line, "Suck my dick!" A Washington muckamuck pretty accurately sums up the situation in explicit pitchman's terms: "Joan of Arc meets Supergirl. " Anne Bancroft, Scott Wilson; directed by Ridley Scott. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd
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