hard to feel great for O'Neil's accomplishments when the movie doesn't make you really respect the U.S. military in general
It's hard to feel that great for Jordan O'Neil's accomplishments in the military when the movie doesn't make the U.S. military itself look good. The movie has to portray the military as a whole positively in order to really make O'Neil look good. O'Neil joins the fictional Combined Reconnaissance Team, which is supposedly the military's most elite unit. Despite being the most elite unit, somehow the men who get into the training program for it are just awful. They're immature, superficial and unprofessional.
The worst of the bunch are Slovnik and Cortez. When O'Neil moves into the men's barracks, Slovnik immediately freaks out, acting like an immature teenager. He goes berserk over the prospect of having to be around when she has her periods. When Cortez is on top of the wall on the obstacle course and O'Neil is reaching for his hand so he can pull her up, he instead tells her to quit the training and then he goes down the other side of the wall without helping her up. When they're on the island for SERE training and under O'Neil's command, Slovnik and Cortez go into the water, deliberately disobeying O'Neil's orders. When they reach the dock, Slovnik reaches out to grab a helmet on top of a pole, insisting he just wants a souvenir. He casually acts like he's on vacation rather than on an important training exercise for the military's most elite unit.
How could Slovnik and Cortez be so unprofessional? They act like they don't really care about getting into the Combined Reconnaissance Team. They act like they're not the military's most elite operators. Even if they don't like training alongside a woman, they should at least be professional enough to not complain and do the best that they can to train alongside her. The whole point of the training for the Combined Reconnaissance Team is that they have to get through enormous difficulties in order to succeed but they completely ignore that reality when it comes to dealing with O'Neil. For some reason they can't apply the attitude of perserverance and professionalism when it comes to dealing with O'Neil.
And the scene with Urgayle beating up O'Neil on the island might be the worst. Urgayle beating up O'Neil in front of the other trainees and acting as if he's about to rape her completely disgusts them. His behavior so disgusts the trainees that they all turn their backs on him. They completely lose all the respect they had for him. How could he continue training men who had lost all respect for him? How could they go into battle under the command of a man for whom they had lost all respect? How are we supposed to respect the military when its most elite unit is trained by a man who so disgusts all of his trainees that they literally turn their backs on him? It just makes the military look terrible.
And the cherry on top is during the battle scene when one of the men is twice shown yelling 'Woohoo!' while shooting his gun. Is that really what a man in the military's most elite unit does in the middle of combat? Is that what he does when his life and the lives of all those around him are on the line?