YMMV / Courage Under Fire

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Whilst it's fair to take the word of Rady's wife at face value when she said that she disliked Walden for perceiving her as "butch" and coming across as obnoxious. The revaluation that Walden put her life in danger and stood up against the rest of her crew to save him, may indicate that Walden and Rady might've been pretty close, and that Rady's wife saw her as a romantic rival. Rady's wife may have been trying to erroneously convince him that Walden was incompatible with him due to her being mean spirited and homosexual in an attempt to break up any potential relationship between the two.
• Anvilicious: The film likes to remind us all that Captain Walden is a capable officer who also happens to be a woman. A lot. When Montfriez accidentally shoots her, she even throws out a heavy-handed line about how she can handle the pain since it's nothing compared to delivering a nine pound baby girl.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The ending scene in which Serling goes to Walden's resting place salute her gravestone and lay down one of his recently awarded medals to pay tribute to the woman he saw as a true hero, is comparable to the ending of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, where Naked Snake/Big Boss (shortly after receiving the Medal of Honour) visits and salutes the grave of The Boss (and "return" her custom rifle) for more or less the same reasons.
• Questionable Casting: Mark Kermode uses "Meg Ryan as a helicopter pilot" as a way of judging ridiculous casting decisions.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Once you know the truth behind the mystery, it becomes fairly easy to criticize the characters in particular for their lack of nuance. Everyone is who they appear to be on the surface; The character we're clearly meant to root for is good, the character the film establishes almost immediately that we're supposed to dislike turns out to be evil, the guilty guy who seems in over his head turns out to be exactly that... the lack of any kind of hidden depths to anybody can leave the plot itself feeling kind of cheap.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Walden is intended to be not only every bit as competent as her recommendation states, but also Incorruptible Pure Pureness. However, she does fail to inspire men under her command, is a stubborn hardass and ultimately has to assert her authority at gunpoint - which is what gets her fragged. Thus, for all her courage, she's also proven to be a pretty bad commanding officer, rather than the all-around paragon of virtue the script clearly wants to present her as.

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