MovieChat Forums > Good Morning, Vietnam (1988) Discussion > Sgt. Major Dickerson

Sgt. Major Dickerson

posted 11 years ago by fountaincap
17 replies | jump to latest

Anyone else feel like this guy deserved a much worse fate? I mean, all that happens to him in the end is he's transferred to a boring assignment. But isn't he pretty much guilty of the attempted murder of Garlic and Cronauer by sending them on what he knows to be a VC-controlled road? I'm guessing this part is fiction, but from a film standpoint, I don't think this character got enough punishment. And don't you think it would have come out eventually, that he witheld information from men under his command that nearly got them killed?

[–] Altho73 11 years ago

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Anyone else feel like this guy deserved a much worse fate?
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Up until that point when he crossed the line I was totally on the side of the Sgt Major. I intensively disliked the Robin Williams character from the beginning of the movie and thruout because he was an idiotic, childish p***k who had never grown up and still behaved like he was a kid at school.

I could name dozens of people like this that I have encountered in school, work etc, wherever you go there always seems to be one!!!! And guess what, in real life they are NOT great guys as portrayed in movies but are exceptionally annoying and are hated by their compatriots.

I remember one instance in school when one of these jerks made a series of smart-ass remarks to a very angry teacher. The teacher was not amused, he went ballistic and punished the entire class with a week's detention which did not go down very well. A few days later some of the boys got hold of this annoying jerk and snow-boarded him all the way down a 200 yard corridor and then all the way back again. He didn't like that much, but he fully deserved it.

[–] Futurefan 10 years ago

I loved Robin Williams in this movie, and his portrayal of Cronauer was hilarious. It was one gag after the other nonstop. I know that in real life a guy like Cronauer would probably be an annoying idiot, but he was a great DJ on the radio and the troops loved him.

Dickerson and Hauk were the jerks in my opinion. They needed to enforce some standards, but I didn't like the way they came down on Cronauer for playing rock music, joking about the weather, and making humorous gags about the Vietnam situation. Big deal!

And what was with the policy about not reading real news stories on the air? Cronauer went against the censors and reported that incident on the air in his own way, but was reprimanded because it wasn't official. What does it take to make a story official anyway? It happened, and innocent people were injured & killed from it. Their so-called standards were too tight.

Both Dickerson and Hauk were tight-asses who needed to loosen up a little because as General Taylor said to Dickerson toward the end of the movie: this is only radio.

[–] lllflypaperlll 10 years ago

god you're a fa44got

[–] bsu_oak530 10 years ago

Altho...you're an idiot.