Some mixed feelings about the movie

Just re-saw the movie. It's very well done as a piece of cinema but... I think that, in real life, the "few good men" in such situations probably never win. Colonel crazy pants and his minions almost certainly have their way.

With this in mind, the movie acquires some unpleasant connotations. By basically presenting an idealized magical scenario as if it's real, it actually whitewashes the ugly reality. It's basically telling us "you can't handle the truth" - so here's a nice feel-good fantasy. Don't worry about it, see? justice gets done, and it's epic.

Another interesting thing is that we are repeatedly shown that lawyers face adverse personal incentives. The stuff that helps them get ahead personally is often against the interests of their clients and of justice. However, each time this happens in the movie, the characters do the right - altruistic - thing, putting themselves in danger in the name of justice. But, again, I suspect that, in the real world, such adverse incentives are not in fact usually overcome. So the movie uncovers a structural incentive problem, but only to put on some rose-tainted glasses showing us a far-fetched story with highly idealistic characters.

All these things of course make a good movie, but it gives me some mixed feelings about what the movie actually accomplishes because it seems that the effect is to put us to sleep with respect to the fact that these injustices are probably prevalent.