COURAGE UNDERDONE

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

In the confusion of a nighttime armored battle during the Gulf War, Lieut. Colonel Nathaniel Serling (Denzel Washington) unleashes that bitterest irony (and reality) of modern warfare--friendly fire--and destroys one of his own tanks, killing his best friend.

On another day in the same theater, Captain Karen Walden (Meg Ryan), piloting a medevac helicopter, relieves a unit pinned down by a superior Iraqi force. In the course of this operation her craft is downed, and she and her crew fight off enemy attacks all night long. The next morning, though wounded, she stays behind to cover their withdrawal to a rescue chopper and is killed.

Question, as posed in Courage Under Fire: Should she, as the result of these actions, be the first woman to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor? Answer: maybe yes, maybe no. Heroism must be investigated before it can be officially rewarded and--talk about ironies--the semidisgraced Serling is assigned to the inquiry. Plagued by guilty nightmares about his own conduct and drinking too much as a result, he is soon waist-deep in Rashomon country. For the survivors of the episode tell conflicting stories, some of which hint--hold on for more ironies--that Walden might actually have behaved badly. Or might have been herself victimized by friendly fire.

We don't really believe that. In the words of that very smart screenwriter William Goldman, "Stars will not play weak, and they will not play blemished"--especially stars who are playing potential feminist paragons. Indeed, we're pretty sure Patrick Sheane Duncan's script will also find some circumstances to extenuate Serling's initial screw-up, since he's played by a star too.

This is O.K. for a while. Director Edward Zwick has a deft way with combat scenes, and nobody is better than Washington at conveying tormented dutifulness. What's not so O.K. is Courage Under Fire's pretensions to moral seriousness. It would like to be a thoughtful meditation on bravery, honor, truth--the big topics. But it's really just a crudely manipulated mystery story, building suspense by arbitrarily withholding pertinent information. It's hard to take its thoughts on integrity seriously when it exhibits so little of that quality in its own storytelling.

--By Richard Schickel