Courage Under Fire (1996)

Film: Courage Under Fire (1996)

Stars: Denzel Washington, Meg Ryan, Lou Diamond Phillips, Michael Moriarty, Matt Damon

Director: Edward Zwick

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 (and now 2025) Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Meg Ryan: click here to learn more about Ms. Ryan (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Meg Ryan's pretty intense breakout fame for When Harry Met Sally... came with something of a price.  Unlike other "America's Sweethearts" actresses like Audrey Hepburn & Julia Roberts who got box office receipts AND the ultimate stamp-of-acclaim from the industry (a Best Actress Oscar nomination) early on in her career, Ryan was left off of the list by the Academy in 1989 (I suspect she was in the conversation, and one wonders if she would've had a different career if she'd gotten that sort of credibility at some point during her peak movie star years).  The early 1990's had Ryan alternating between rom-com hits like Sleepless in Seattle and French Kiss with edgier fare, meant to expand Ryan beyond her cutesy "girl next door" routine which had made America fall in love with her.  By-and-large, this was not successful.  She worked with Oliver Stone in The Doors (which bombed), starred in the Oscar-winning period drama Restoration (which also bombed), and played opposite her husband Dennis Quaid in the thriller Flesh and Bone (which, you guessed it, bombed).  Ryan's two successes getting out of the romantic-comedy trope were When a Man Loves a Woman (which won her a SAG Award nomination, though that didn't mean she was "close to Oscar" in the way it would now...SAG used to be WAY more individualistic with their choices) and today's film Courage Under Fire, the first major movie to talk about the Gulf War in Hollywood, and would pair her opposite one of the biggest leading men of the era, though like several of her outings with Tom Hanks...that didn't mean they would share much screen time.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows Lt. Col. Nathaniel Serling (Washington), an alcoholic who is getting past a mistake he made during the war where he (accidentally) shot friendly fire on his fellow soldiers during an intense battle.  This was covered up by the American military, with him instead getting an award for bravery.  He is now on desk duty, though, and is investigating whether Captain Karen Walden (Ryan) has earned the distinction of being the first woman to win the Medal of Honor for combat.  His investigation, held alongside his doubts about the military & medals in general given he has won one that he feels he has not earned, turns up several inconsistencies, as the men who served with her, particularly Staff Sergeant John Monfriez (Phillips) & Specialist Andrew Ilario (Damon) have such varied opinions on Walden, and her actions in battle.  As the film progresses (recalling Rashomon) we learn that Walden's actions, like Serling's, are grey, as is much of battle, and those haunted by it.

Courage Under Fire is the kind of movie that doesn't really exist anymore-a star-driven drama, released in the summer almost exclusively as a box office play.  Today, the only angle the studios would have for a picture like this would be "Oscar bait"...even though the Academy in 1996, a year when they were pretty allergic to major studio flicks like this, wouldn't have touched it (it's worth noting it was in enough of the conversation circa 1996, though, that Entertainment Weekly predicted Washington would be cited for Best Actor).  That's a pity, because there's something here.  The storytelling is easy, but riveting, and the way that it handles the unusual twists in the plot recall some of the best John Grisham adaptations of the era.  I liked it, and was also impressed by Lou Diamond Phillips & a young Matt Damon (looking gaunt in a role where he lost over 30 pounds, and was so impressive he'd eventually get his roles in The Rainmaker and Saving Private Ryan from directors admiring this turn) in diametrically-opposed roles in the investigation (yet both men that are haunted by their actions in wartime in different ways).

Ryan, though, is not very good.  I feel this needs to be said at this point (especially because I don't get much kinder the further I go)-I love Meg Ryan.  Her work in Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail is hallowed ground in my house, and I do like her in literally everything I've seen her in in the sense that I like spending time with Meg Ryan.  But in the most dramatic and heaviest lifting of her career, I don't think she's able to get this part across-the-finish line.  It doesn't help that she's not actually sharing any screen-time with Washington (I think they would've paired well, but she's dead the entire time that Washington's character is aware of her), but she also can't land her southern accent properly, and the film's views on feminism (insisting that she's the one who cries on the mission) are pretty lazy.  As we'll talk about over the next couple of weeks, Ryan, an actress who once turned down the lead in The Silence of the Lambs because it was "too violent" would never get another role this traditionally meaty again in a prominent studio film; she'd star in dramas, but never of this pedigree.  You have to wonder if part of the reason she didn't get it was because people saw this, and wondered if she could carry a film like that without someone more "actorly" like Washington helping her.