ood Men is a movie about the trial of two Marines for murder. The main characters are Lt.j.g. Dan Kaffey and Lt.Cmdr Joanne Galloway. They are both lawyers in the Judge Advocate General Corps of the Department of the Navy. They are the defense attorneys for Lance Corporal Dawson and Private First Class Downey. Dawson and Downey were charged with murdering a member of their squad, Private First Class William Santiago. The reason that they killed him was technically an accident. They were trying to haze him when something went wrong. The reason they were disciplining him was because he broke the chain of command and went outside his unit for help. In the Marine Corps that is wrong because it makes the Marines in your chain of command look like a bunch of morons. The two Marines, Dawson and Downey were ordered by their platoon commander who in turn was ordered by the battalion commander to discipline Santiago. The two Marines did not want to cut a deal for minimum jail time because the believed that they did nothing wrong they were following orders and they did not intend to kill him. The movie talks about a code that Marines follow especially Marines forward deployed on tense situation. Basically the code said that the unit and the mission come first all other things are secondary including comfort and personal safety. The Marines get through the trial and are found innocent because they were only following orders and did not intend to kill Santiago. They were found guilty of conduct unbecoming of a Marine and were dishonorably discharged from the Marine Corps. The battalion commander Colonel Jessup was set to be court martialed for ordering the Code Red (hazing) and Kaffey and Galloway look like heroes for finding out the truth and righting the wrongs.When you compare these two works you find yourself look at two possible extremes of military life although they are both fictitious and not even based on true stories. Catch-...
