I never saw this movie at the theater, but I read so much about the rape, murder, and nudity that I was expecting a real shocker in that regard. That is far from the truth. It is a classy film noir thriller, could be a Raymond Chandler story except that it takes place in the Army. Scratch that. If you wanted to write a Marlowe story today, it would HAVE to take place in the Army, so you could avoid all the political correctness of the civilian world. Travolta is as hard-boiled and cocky as they come, and he doesn't have to let anybody have an attorney or read them their rights or get any search warrants amd he doesn't need any stinkin' badges. Everybody he investigates outranks him and, as in a Chandler story, everyone lies with every syllable they utter, so Barbarino uses the traditional detective trick of beating the living shit out of them and/or threatening them with 40 years in the brig and a court martial for hindering an investigation. He slips the cuffs on the high command if they give him any lip, and no courts can tell him not to. Just like Stallone in Judge Dredd, except Travolta would have been better with Rob Schneider around than Madeleine Stowe.

Madeleine Stowe? Yup, she's in there somewhere in a role that has no business being in the movie. Here's what happened. There were originally several scenes involving the rekindled romance between Stowe and Travolta. They are on the DVD as deleted scenes, and they are not the usual crappy unfinished VHS images, but gorgeous scenes, fully finished in every way. The movie even ended with the two of them driving off together into the sunset, even though Travolta finds out that Stowe is not divorced at all, but simply lied to him about her husband! And the driving off into the sunset goes on and on and on and on through a picturesque sunset over the Georgia swamps, turning the ending into a happy, fulfilled love story. Luckily, the director sobered up at the last minute, and realized that all that crap detracted from the central drama. The happy romantic ending was especially mood-destroying, so he shit-canned that footage.

Unfortunately, without the romantic sub-plot, there was no reason for Stowe to be there at all. Travolta could have been investigating on his own, and the story probably would have flowed much better. But the movie was already shot, cut, and scored, when the director decided to shit-can the romantic sub-plot, so he was stuck with several scenes that included Stowe for no apparent purpose, and some dialogue between Stowe and Travolta that hinted at the excised scenes but, without those scenes to refer to, they made only oblique sense.

Although they did some romantic bantering between them in the final cut, that all just got dropped from the resolution of the film, and we viewers have no idea what became of it at the end.

Too bad about that mess, but it's a good watch, anyway. What the hell, it's a perfect Raymond Chandler story, as I said. Every single guy in the movie was a possible suspect. Every single guy lied to or stonewalled the investigators (except the West Point psychologist). The murder victim slept with everyone on and off the base, except a couple of gay guys, and we weren't even sure about them. Because of all these factors, everyone was a suspect at one time or another, and the filmmaker keeps diverting our suspicion from one to another. And to make it truly delicious, most of the people who were not guilty of the murder were guilty of something or another that they wanted to hide, or that they should have wanted to hide. Yup, a good enough watch. Hammett and Chandler would love it.

The nudity, however, is not anywhere near so dramatic as we were led to believe. Here ya go.