The General's Daughter Reviews

Since my wife has always been a fan of John Travolta, we ended up watching this movie together. Personally, I always thought that Travolta was a decent actor but even after he made his come-back with ‘Pulp Fiction’, the guy always kept making some dubious career choices. Anyway, eventually, even though it turned out to be one of the better movies starring this actor, I still ended up with some mixed feelings. Indeed, on one hand, it was a rather effective police procedural with a decent cast (John Travolta, Madeleine Stowe, James Cromwell, Timothy Hutton, James Woods), a nice mood and a decent and almost realistic story-line dealing with the treatment of female soldiers. However, even though I thought it was all fairly entertaining, it felt also really sleazy and I couldn’t shake the feeling that the makers didn’t really care about this serious topic (the frequent rapes of female soldiers) and, in fact, they just wanted to use it to make a rather straightforward thriller. At least, it was pretty neat to see the always lovely Madeleine Stowe but, unfortunately, this movie would be one of her very last theatrical features. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was still a decent watch and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

The cast is the sole reason to look in on this mid-tempo, dark suspense flick. John Travolta, Madeline Stowe, Tim Hutton, James Woods and James Cromwell are all in good form in this paranoid anti-alpha male military thriller.

Released two years after G.I. Jane, this is another look at the changing U.S. military culture, where women are admitted to the elite military academies (USMA, West Point, in this case) and are a growing part of the officer class. This film, unsurprisingly, plays the rape epidemic at these institutions mainly for "thrills" with little in the way of (substantive) commentary. Again, no surprises there, as this is a Hollywood whodunit.