A FEW GOOD MEN
BBC America, 8:00 p.m. ET
Can you handle Aaron Sorkin’s breakout film vehicle? If you can, and you should, tune in and watch the way he wrote the screenplay adapting his stage play into this 1992 movie. Rob Reiner directed it, knowing full well Sorkin had given him a knockout courtroom climax pitting military attorney Tom Cruise against a fierce colonel played by Jack Nicholson. It’s a stunning scene, powerfully acted – and A Few Good Men makes room for so many good performances, every scene is littered with them. And for a movie that soon will be 30 years old, its cast is full of faces to watch: not only Nicholson, Cruise and Demi Moore, who were big stars at the time, but Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Pollak, James Marshall, Noah Wyle and Cuba Gooding Jr., who weren’t. But three years later, Gooding would reteam with Cruise, and shine even more brightly, as a pro football player asking Cruise’s sports agent to “Show me the money!” in Jerry Maguire.