Spoilers. It's a potentially interesting story. A young blonde Marine captain has an affair with her superior officer, discovers he is married, is handed the usual line of baloney from her lover ("I'm going to divorce her."), tries nonetheless to end the arrangement, is stalked by her balked and angry major, and plugs him a couple of times when he sneaks into her house armed with a pistol and knife and dressed in camouflage. There is a court martial, which provides a kind of framing story.
The performances -- by Heche, Shephard, and Stoltz -- are actually quite good. Anne Heche has a peculiarly bland beauty. It seems as if someone had grabbed the tip of her nose and pulled all of her facial features forward, but this only adds to the impression of fragility in her appearance. Sam Shephard, who has penned some remarkable plays, is growing craggy but no less handsome. But he's a light actor, and a good guy. It's as hard to accept him as a deranged Marine as it would be to accept, say, Gary Cooper in such a role. Stoltz has had a strange career, beginning really with "Mask." A book should be written about how he managed to get from American Samoa to Hollywood. His appearance, pale and with shockingly red hair, doesn't suggest strength, although he imbues his character with determination through sheer talent.
There are what we might call "directorial touches" expressed in the editing that are mostly a nuisance. Example: Stoltz is the defense counsel and is interviewing witnesses to a public altercation between the lovers. He asks a question. Witness number one answers it evasively. He asks a follow-up question. Cut to witness number two, who answers evasively. Stoltz asks question number three. Cut. Witness number three answers evasively. I can understand that courtroom dramas may need some pepping up, but puzzling the viewers about where and when we are isn't the way to do it. Anyway if it's well-enough done, trials and their preceding investigations don't need tricks to succeed.
There may be some sort of gender-equality message embedded in this movie too. Heche can run the obstacle course faster than anyone in her command. I taught classes at Camp Lejeune for a while and never ran into prejudice against women but my students may have been a select group. I don't doubt that there are musclebound macho types in the organization who resent the intrusion of women into that male-bonded society. You have to watch your swearing and all that. And some of the men did refer to female enlistees as BAMs {I'll let you figure it out) but only jokingly. It was no worse than what they called each other.
And Heche, after all, is a big girl, divorced and with two daughters. An officer in her position ought really to know better than to succumb to the advances of her superior officer, although, to be sure, power is an aphrodisiac, as Henry Kissinger once said. What was she thinking? What did she expect to happen? Cardboard romance culminating in official ritual? And Shephard's character was equally dumb. Driven by deeds that his glands, not his reason, put him up to, he begins boffing his subordinate and confusing the roles within that rigidly authoritarian structure. After sleeping with her, he has a public argument with her and shouts, "Don't you walk away. I am your COMMANDING OFFICER!" Well, Sam, you can't have it both ways. And you should have known that from the beginning.
When Heche testifies at the trial, of course we get her take on what happened exclusively -- Sam now being dead and all. How's this? She's in bed. Big Sam attacks tiny Anne with a drawn pistol. They wrestle around. She manages to twist the pistol around and shoot him in the belly. Not to be turned away, Sam falls to the floor and begins to crawl towards a knife he has dropped, so she puts one in his back. This is what she tells the jury anyway, and she is the only surviving witness. Well, there are a few, umm, implausibilities here, but never mind.
I've spent time pointing out what I thought were weaknesses in the film but it's an interesting enough story and is worth watching.
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