Over the last year, I have been going back and watching many of the movies I loved as a teenager in the 90s. However, I have also been trying to watch some popular movies of the 90s that I missed for whatever reason during my teenage years, and Courage Under Fire is one of those movies. How I had gone the better part of 30 years without seeing this is beyond me, but this was absolutely fantastic stuff, and it had me on the edge of my seat.
Where to Watch Courage Under Fire
Courage Under Fire was released on July 12, 1996. You can stream the film from a digital platform.
The Movie Review
Courage Under Fire has an incredible cast, Denzel Washington (check our him in more recent movies: The Equalizer 3 and Gladiator II) and Meg Ryan are the leads, but there is also a fantastic supporting cast here. I got a huge kick out of Lou Diamond Phillips being in this movie. For me, he is one of the most underrated actors of the 80s and 90s. He was in so much stuff that I loved. Sean Astin is also in the movie, and there are some earlier roles for Matt Damon and Sean Patrick Thomas as well.
Plot Overview: A Military Thriller with Emotional Depth
What we have here is a military thriller and a bit of a mystery movie as well. Denzel Washington plays the role of a soldier called Nathanial Serling. During the Persian Gulf War, Serling accidentally friendly fires on his best friend’s tank, killing him in the process. He is absolutely devastated by this, but like with many friendly fire incidents, the military covers this up, and they end up transferring Serling to a desk job to keep him out of the way.
Serling is just trying to get on with his life, but he is still haunted by the mistake that he made and also the fact that he feels like he was never made to pay for it. Captain Karen Walden was a medevac chopper pilot, and she was killed in action, and Serling is tasked with trying to decide if she is worthy of getting a Medal of Honor, which would be a first for the military.
Meg Ryan’s Role and the Unraveling Mystery
Walden is played by Meg Ryan, and we see what she went through via a series of flashbacks. She was leading a chopper mission that went very, very wrong, and as Serling starts to investigate what happened, he realizes that there are many different versions of the story. Also, he gets the sense that people are hiding things. This all stirs up a lot of memories and internal anguish for him, and he vows to get to the bottom of what really happened on the helicopter and how Walden lost her life.
Outstanding Performances and a Powerful Ending
What we end up getting is a little under two hours of just fantastic acting from everyone involved. I well and truly felt like I was on this journey with Serling, and I kept changing my mind on who I felt was telling the truth and who was just an absolute scumbag. Even though this movie is nearly 30 years old as I write this, I will not go into spoilers. However, the way the story unfolds is just perfect, and the little twist at the end was an absolute mind blower.
As you can tell, I had a great time watching Courage Under Fire. I watched this on Disney+. Yet, as soon as it finished, I grabbed my phone so I could order this on 4K… and there is no 4K version of this movie yet! There is a Blu-Ray, which I was able to find dirt cheap, so I do at least have this classic in my collection. In this attempt to watch great movies I missed out on as a teenager, this is up there as one of the best that I have seen so far.
