An Officer and a Gentleman by Douglas Day Steward - 8.4 out of 10

An Officer and a Gentleman by Douglas Day Steward
8.4 out of 10


One would be reminded of the more famous, but less worthy Top Gun when watching An Officer and a Gentleman, what with the flying for the Navy, the beautiful lovers and even the motorcycle.

To cap it all, Zack Mayo, the solid if not exceptional Richard Gere, is also a Maverick.
As a child, he tried to reunite with a hard drinking, womanizing, unattached, dishonest father who rejects him and states that he would be better off in an institution somewhere than with him.

The boy, who is maybe only eight at the time, shouts amidst cries, that he is a liar, he had promised his mother, who had just committed suicide, leaving no note and traumatizing further an already pained child, that he would return.
Byron Mayo aka the excellent Robert Loggia protests his innocence, only to be rebuffed by the son who declares he had read his letters and declarations of love and loyalty.

One day, the adult Zack intends to talk with his father, who, perhaps twelve years later, is the same epicurean, sick from to much drinking, vomiting in the bathroom where shockingly, his son remains near him.
Indeed, I was upset by this scene, which made no sense...why would anyone hang in there, just to stand near someone who is spilling foul smelling porridge in the toilet?

Against all odds, Zack Mayo wants to enlist and graduate the Navy Officer Candidate School and become an aviator.
This seems impossible and the magnitude of the mountain that has to be climbed becomes evident when the aspiring young people meet Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley aka Louis Gossett Jr., who won the Academy Award for this role.

Zack becomes a friend of Sid Worley aka David Keith, and the two of them meet Paula Pokrifki and her friend, Lynette.
Girls in the area are desperate to marry would be pilots, at least some of them and this seems to be the legend.

Lynette is clearly animated by that goal and when the prospect of marrying becomes certain, she does not want to...not with someone who is not a pilot anyway.
For Paula and Zack is looks like they have a love story, albeit it not without turmoil and drama, given that Mayo has had the childhood that appears to make him opaque, impenetrable, hostile to and perhaps incapable of affection and relationships.

Ironically, Paula lives in a family where her mother has married a man that is not the biological father...the real parent was an...aviator.
The film is almost inspirational at times, for some characters prove to have extraordinary talents, skills and value...courage, determination, self sacrifice, grit, emotional intelligence, creativity and more.

If not a classic, this motion picture is anyway better, more sophisticated, although not in the least high brow, than Top Gun and other films of that caliber.