Cinema: Big Mac

AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN Directed by Taylor Hackford Screenplay by Douglas Day Stewart

It is as if they shot the novelization instead of the screenplay. An Officer and a Gentleman works more like a paperback page turner than a film intended for the allegedly sophisticated movie audience of the '80s. It is full of bang-on melodramatics and simple, romanticized characters with carefully supplied motivations. Aside from a few delightfully dishonorable throwbacks, we haven't had moviemaking like this since the '50s, and maybe we don't want it. But what a long-denied pleasure it...

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