Vincent Irizarry
as Fragetti in

Heartbreak Ridge

1986

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Heartbreak Ridge: A Few Very Good Men
Review by Sywriter

The gritty 1986 war drama Heartbreak Ridge is a one-man production all the way, with the acclaimed Clint Eastwood starring, directing, and producing. Vincent Irizarry is a supporting player, coming off his Guiding Light Lujack role. It’s a joy to see VI transfer his characteristic zest and dynamism to the big screen.

It’s 1983, and Gunnery sergeant Tom Highway is about as tough a guy as you’ll ever meet. “Gunny’s” in jail on charges of drunk and disorderly.  He’s also reluctantly facing mandatory retirement from the Marines, the best life he’s ever known. The movie establishes Gunny’s character right away when he casually overpowers a knife-wielding Godzilla-type sharing his cell. Later, Gunny’s old Marine pal calls him a mean and nasty bastard who carries so much metal he can’t pass through a metal detector. In fact, Gunny’s made so many enemies by doing things his way that when he’s transferred back to home base in North Carolina, his CO Major Powers (the movie’s head villain) tells him he’s an anachronism he can’t wait to get rid of. None of this bothers Gunny. He just wants to get to work on his new “recon” platoon, reject troops in need of rehabilitation. It’s obvious his platoon lieutenant, a nerdy, prissy guy in glasses (proud of being his ROTC’s CO in college), isn’t going to be much help.

Okay, now for the troops. They’re the Dirty Dozen redux, a set of guys who look like they came straight from West Side Story. Chief among them is Skitch (Mario Van Peebles) a jive-talking, con-man musician who’s already run afoul of Gunny previously. The pool playing troops insolently look up as Gunny enters the barracks, bad attitude morphing into sullen obedience when Gunny drags a soldier around by the nose.  Later, to make a point, he rips Skitch’s earring out of his ear. VI’s wearing sunglasses, tight jeans and a black T-shirt. He looks mighty fine, but not much like a Marine.

While the troops plot to trip up Gunny any way possible, he proceeds to whip them into respectable Marine material instead. The sunglasses get stomped on, the mismatched T-shirts are ordered off, hair gets shaved to the scalp, and rigorous physical training ensues. In between Gunny paying occasional visits to his cocktail- waitress ex-wife Aggie (Marsha Mason as a no-nonsense sort of gal) and starting fights off-base, he bullies the troops into shape. He runs them into the ground (setting the pace), he shoots live ammo at them, teaching a healthy respect for the enemy’s weapon, he shames them into shooting straight on the rifle range. Gunny’s taunted mercilessly about his “retards” by old Marine rivals, but it doesn’t stop his relentless drive for discipline. When his troops rebel by hiding behind their pal Swede, newly released from the brig, Gunny effortlessly puts down the hulking Goliath to everyone’s disbelief.

It’s all seamlessly played out, Eastwood hanging tough with his customary facial twitch, his laconic voice rasping out commands and epithets with equal ease. The troops reluctantly come to admire the guy who refuses to let them be targets in a field exercise and turns the tables on Major Powers and his elite troops by capturing them. VI’s a Lujack-you’re-in-the-army-now character, tough, streetwise, and adorable in T-shirts and training gear. Besides the troops learning to appreciate Gunny standing up for them against Powers, there’s the standard revelation of a tough guy’s soft side: Gunny gives money to an AWOL’s family. He clumsily courts Aggie by gleaning info from women’s magazines. Off-base, he gets stuck one night in a cell next to Skitch’s, and Skitch learns about Heartbreak Ridge when Gunny’s Marine pal bails them out. It’s where Gunny earned his Medal of Honor in Korea, one of only three men to survive a brutal battle. And so it goes, the troops bonding with each other and with Gunny, winning another field exercise against Powers’ platoon, proud of Gunny for taking on Powers in a mud fight and winning. There’s a nice scene when Gunny’s opposite, Webster, tries to lure the troops into signing a statement saying Gunny violated the rules and used live ammo in training. VI leads their refusal to sell Gunny out, belligerently saying , “We ain’t got nothin’ to say to you, Webster.”

All the threads come together with the Grenada invasion when the raw troops suddenly find themselves in a shooting war. Eastwood directs some atmospheric shots of an aircraft carrier and his untried Marines readying for battle, after which they’re dropped into a explosive war zone. Can his guys make it and take it? From the minute Eastwood kills his first enemy and calmly hijacks a Cuban cigar from his pocket, we know the answer’s gonna be, hell, yes. Gunny’s guys rescue the American medical students (in a panic, VI gets to shoot up a skeleton). The platoon heroically takes a bridge. They get pinned down, and the troops use good old fashioned Marine ingenuity to call down fire by using the local phone service to call North Carolina. When the commanding officer of the whole shebang praises Gunny and dresses down Major Powers, it’s the icing on the cake. In the best tradition of all military movies, the boys have turned into men. Even the prissy lieutenant.

Only one question is left unanswered. As they all come home to a big Marine welcome, will the Marine-weary Aggie be there for Gunny? As all his men dash into the arms of their waiting women, Gunny walks on alone. And then he spies her. Aggie is waiting. Everyone makes it to happily ever after.

Heartbreak Ridge is a thoroughly enjoyable film, and a great look at a post-Lujack, baby-faced VI with very short hair. He does the Marines proud.

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