An Officer and a Gentleman

This was the film that prompted thousands of women to fall madly in love with a man not dissimilar looking to an aardvark, albeit a highly charismatic one.

Richard Gere, in his seminal role, plays Zack, a young man looking for direction in his life and for the chance to prove to himself that he is better than his alcoholic abusive father, whose footsteps he is worried he could be falling in to.

So tossing away his last beer bottle, he signs up to be an officer in the U.S Navy.

Training is tough with a deceptively hardhearted drill sergeant (Gossett Jr.), keeping them on the straight and narrow, but Zack, the loner from the wrong side of the tracks with the moody eyes meets a good friend in his bunkmate, Sid (Keith) and starts dating a pretty local girl called Paula (Winger).

However, the romance with Paula doesn’t go particularly smoothly (it never does….) as Zack is torn between completing his Naval training and achieving his goal whilst falling in love with Paula.

However, as training and the film reach their climax, there’s lots of drama and unhappiness for all the players with Zack and Paula splitting up for good or is it… well of course it’s not!

This is America and this is the movies! A wonderful ending to the film, which I won’t ruin just in case you haven’t seen it before, but suffice to say it involves Richard Gere, a naval uniform and strong arms...

"Way to go Paula!"