Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Serling (Denzel Washington) has just been caught in the crosshairs of a prickly military situation that involved him accidentally giving the order to fire on an enemy tank. But it looks like he's going to get out of that ordeal relatively unscathed and now he's onto his next mission; doing a proper investigation into the details of Captain Karen Emma Walden, who's being given a posthumous Medal Of Honor. All he's gotta do is interview some soldiers she and her teammates saved as well as the men serving under her command and Walden's daughter will be able to receive her mother's medal.
But once he starts digging, Serling finds some discrepancies in the various recounts of Walden's final days on this Earth. It's little things, but those little things add up, doncha know. As he starts to question these cracks in the story, his higher-ups ask him to just let it go. That's not something Serling is willing to do so he begins to put together his own investigation into what really happened with Walden on the day of her death, which slowly uncovers a larger conspiracy at play. As more and more reality is exposed, Serling is going to get more and more challenged as he finds the hard price one must pay for hunting down the truth.
Courage Under Fire is one of those movies that really needed an extra dash of inventiveness in its story. For a movie all about uncovering the truth, the eventual reality of the situation that Serling has been chasing for the entire movie isn't quite enough of a shock to feel like a satisfactory ending to his search for answers. People you think were bad in this situation turn out to be (GASP!) bad, people you think were good or sympathetic in this situation turn out to be (GASP!) good or sympathetic. It's not like I needed a massive forced M. Night Shyamalan level twist for the movie to work, but what we do get does feel like an underwhelming conclusion given all the build-up throughout.
A tendency to play things overly safe is probably the biggest problem with Courage Under Fire. It dabbles briefly in darker subject matter like the Government putting publicity before truth or Serling's own alcohol dependency, but then it just wraps up these plotlines in overly tidy bows, if it even bothers to give such plot details an ending (Serling's reliance on booze just sort of fades out as a presence in the story). That's a pity because some elements of the movie do work well, namely Denzel Washington in the lead role. Washington can be more intimidating just talking in a slightly stern voice than many actors are when they're yelling at the top of his lungs so he's a sublime fit for the role of a man looking for nearly unobtainable answers from people refusing to blab.
Watching Washington do a quasi-detective routine is enjoyable and he's handling the more vulnerable parts of the character way better than the screenplay is, while Meg Ryan, Scott Glenn and a super skinny Matt Damon also turn in strong turns in supporting roles. In the director's chair on this one is Edward Zwick, a guy who does perfunctory work here that does end up being far too reliant on disorienting rapid-fire editing in the combat sequences. It's admirable that Courage Under Fire wanted to use the angle of different people telling different versions of the same event that Rashamon popularized for some conceptually hefty themes, but the execution of said themes needed to be handled with more depth and cleverness. The result is a movie dealing with darker ideas that favor schmaltz over grimness. Even a scene of Serling meeting with the family of one of the soldiers in the tank that he thought belonged to the enemy fizzles out into sentimentality. It's oh so disappointing, especially since Denzel Washington is delivering a great performance in the lead role.
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