Clint Eastwood's Heartbreak Ridge is best described as a cross between Stripes and Full Metal Jacket. Also, Heartbreak Ridge came out in a time frame in between both film's releases. Clint is great as Marine Corps. lifer Thomas Highway. The supporting cast was excellent as well with Mario Van Peebles giving his best performance ever as "The Duke Of Cool" Stitch Jones. Heartbreak Ridge is a great blend of comedy, drama and action. There is great dialogue, performances and balances genres really well. While not strictly an action movie, Heartbreak Ridge has a lot in common with the cold war era 80's action flicks that were popular in this period. Heartbreak Ridge was not exactly the recruitment poster the US Marines wanted and they withdrew their support for the project. Clint did an about face and went ahead and made the film he wanted to make. Heartbreak Ridge is an excellent film and by far my favorite Clint film to come out in the 80's.

I know it is going to be good! The only question is how good!? Let's start watching it.28minutes - I enjoy it a lot so far. It is really interesting because main character played by Clint Eastwood is unpredictable, you never know what will happen next with him. Movie is full of funny situations, lines and you really can't wait to see more.1h 13minutes - OK it is getting a little boring... It feels like everything went in slow motion and I'm not talking about fancy special effects here... I still want to see more though 1h 33minutes - every time they leave military base the movie is getting dull... The good thing is that those moments last only a couple of minutes. I think the statement I made at the beginning was...hmm... let's say... a little overenthusiastic...1h 48minutes - lol... really...? I didn't think this is gonna be that kind of a movie... bulletproof good guys, zero causalities and the enemies who can't shoot...oh my dear god...WAIT!... one good guy just died!The movie is a little retarded and cheesy... but it is funny as well, especially at the beginning. I really hoped for something else... half of it is good and the other half is just eh... Maybe I jinxed it with my first sentence...?If you like Clint Eastwood/army or both, you shouldn't be disappointed... BUT I WAS ! tgchan's rating: 6/10

The climax of the movie comes when the US military invades Grenada which seems to have no standing military and only weapons purchased by mail order. Obviously going into such dangerous ground means that all the invading soldiers are heroes. It is hard to drum up tension for such a mild finish. Did Clint Eastwood need to be such a tough drill sergeant to prepare his troops to do this? A few boy scouts with bad attitudes could handle this assignment. It is not necessary to have a war movie for every US conflict no matter how petty. Perhaps we need a scene where the soldiers debate bringing their bathing suits to use after the morning's fighting is done. Clint Eastwood did better working with monkeys.

Clint Eastwood plays gunnery sergeant Tom Highway, a tough but rogue military man(and occasional alcoholic) who is often in trouble with his superiors, when he isn't getting in bar fights. He has a distinguished war record(Korea & Vietnam) that gets him some begrudging respect from his colleagues. He is given one more assignment: to train an unruly and disorganized young platoon into shape, before they are sent off into action.Eastwood is believable as the profane and ultra no-nonsense sergeant, but this film is ultimately too long and predictable to succeed, and strangely resembles "Stripes", just from the military's point of view! Still, it does contain good(if familiar) action scenes.