To me, this movie is perfection.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Lt Col Serling (Denzel Washington) leads a squad of tanks in the first Gulf War. He accidentally destroys one of his own tanks in a friendly fire incident. Washington Post reporter Tony Gartner (Scott Glenn) is after the story. Serling is relegated to a desk job. He's assigned to determine if medical helicopter pilot Cpt Karen Emma Walden (Meg Ryan) should be the first woman to receive a Medal of Honor for combat. The White House is very eager. However, there is more than one version of the incident which resulted in her death.I love several things about this movie. Denzel is perfect as always. He needs to hold the center while having a compelling emotional story. Meg Ryan does the hardest acting of her career by bringing different versions of her character to life. Lou Diamond Phillips is great. Matt Damon is unrecognizable. It also has the Rashômon style of storytelling. I love that method. It feels more compelling than the straight forward way. It also feels more real with differing point of views.

There is a strong Story here as an investigation ensues about a potential Medal of Honor recipient and the mysterious conflict of testimonies. It is given a twist with a shot of estrogen as the Soldier involved is the first Female to possibly (Posthumously) be awarded the Nation's Highest Military Honor.That should be enough to make this a riveting Mystery and through flashbacks we are shown some striking battle Scenes. So why add the conflict and strife to the investigating Officer. It is completely unnecessary and is the weakest part of the Film and almost drags it down with unconvincing situations of Combat guilt and Family Dysfunction. That could be a whole other Movie. But with that bloating aside there are some strong Performances by the young Cast (actually outshining Denzel) in supporting Roles as the Combat Unit in question. There is a back Story to everyone and it holds up quite well with the central Theme. It must be mentioned here that although, Meg Ryan is miscast as the Captain, she tries her best but cannot outgrow her limitations and convince as a tough Girl in a hopeless, self sacrificing situation.Overall, not a bad Movie and is worth a watch for the strong parts, but there is much too much padding here, plus the heavy dose of sentimentality finally drags this down from Great Movie to just above Average.

A strong contemporary war drama examining issues of loyalty, protocol, duty and ultimately truth in an unusually constructed film within a film, at the same using multiple viewpoints ( a la "Rashomon" or "Accident") to unfold the complicated truth at its heart. I'm not sure the somewhat contrived structure served the serious subject matter wholly convincingly, the cinematic devices detracting somewhat from the otherwise lifelike depiction of action in the Gulf War. I also thought Denzel Washington's framing role as the senior army officer given the seemingly straightforward task of reporting on the apparently automatic eligibility of Meg Ryan's posthumous award of the Army medal of honour detracted from the central mystery, especially as he wrestles with his own demons after unwittingly being involved in a tragic friendly-fire incident of his own. So Denz fights the bottle and walks out on his family, before uncovering the truth about Ryan's death and the way back to his own redemption.This final resolution and the underlying implication that the US Army welcomes openness is firstly too pat and improbable, especially in the wake of some real-life events that have come to light since then. All that said, the dramatisation of the war is very well realised and the acting is of a high order, Washington giving it strong and silent in a commanding lead role, but there are even better performances from a young Matt Damon and Lou Diamond-Phillips as two of Ryan's crew who survive the ordeal physically but not mentally.Ryan does well too and I was also impressed by the actress in the menial task of playing Washington's wife. Yes, the film ends up as you'd expect, replete with Washington's last respectful visit to Ryan's grave, but there was enough intrigue and grit in the tale to keep me watching throughout. A braver take on the story, inverting some of the discovered truths here might have made for a better film though, but of course there's no way that viewpoint would have been green-lighted in Hollywood.

Okay so the main reason why I decided to see this movie is cause Edward Zwick directed it since I liked "The Last Samurai". Much better film than "Avatar" hands down. This is one of those feel good movies and that is fine, but it's just not that gripping or touching for that matter. The plot is basically about Nat Serling(Denzel Washington) who is Lt Col a Desert Storm veteran that is going through a guilt trip for accidentally killing one of the guy on his team. And while this is going on he is assigned a task to investigate if Capt Karen Walden(played by Meg Ryan) deserves a medal of honor, since she would be the first woman to receive it. But there is some sort of conspiracy and things just keep getting deeper and deeper. So yeah it's one of those patriotic feel good movies, but I found most of it dull and sort of boring. It just wasn't a very interesting film, I didn't even think the film left a big impact or was that powerful as some reviewers claim it to be. It just didn't seem to worth that much in the end and felt like it was mainly about American heroism but just wasn't that powerful.5/10