In A Few Good Men (1992), Tom Cruise played Lieutenant Danny Kaffee, a young Navy lawyer assigned to defend two Marines accused of killing a fellow Marine at Guantanamo Bay. Directed by Rob Reiner from Aaron Sorkin’s play, the film follows Kaffee as he moves from plea-bargaining to a courtroom confrontation with Colonel Nathan R. Jessep, played by Jack Nicholson.
Cruise gave Kaffee quick wit and growing moral seriousness. His cross-examination of Jessep became one of the most quoted courtroom scenes in film, and the film was a major commercial success, earning Academy Award nominations including Best Picture.
A Few Good Men remains a signature Cruise role because it showed him holding his own against Nicholson and Demi Moore, and because Kaffee’s journey from clever lawyer to principled advocate matched Cruise’s own rise as a serious leading man.