One of my biggest pet peeves is military movies that get the military culture, and most annoyingly, researchable, verifiable facts WRONG. To me, it is inexcusable- there are a couple MILLION veterans who would be able to help the Hollywood nitwits out- not everyone has to hire Dale Dye.
At any rate, one of the most egregious and unforgiveable mistakes in recent history was in Courage Under Fire, that 2 hours of bilge, in which my beloved M1A1 Abrams was portrayed as a diesel belching monstrosity. I am not going to explain why this infuriated me (other than I was an M1A1 tanker)- you can go look it up. Then there was that little issue with the spent casings in the turret. Never mind.
At any rate, with much hesitation, I decided to rent and watch Basic tonight- it didn’t look to good, but I am a sucker for a military flick. About ten minutes into the movie, I noticed something that almost made me quit watching. For those who have never been in the military, this is the rank insignia for paygrade E-4, Specialist:
This is the rank insignia for paygrade E-5, Sergeant:
Notice the similarities? You shouldn’t – because there are none- Specialist is an enlisted rank, Sergeant is a Non-Commisioned Officer. They are distinctly different for a reason.
So why then would the main character of the movie, Master Sergeant West (portrayed by Samuel Jackson) a hard charging Ranger Platoon Sergeant, be wearing Specialist rank, when his rank should be this:
Laziness. Sheer, despicable, inexcuseable LAZINESS. Even if the rest of the movie is ok, I will remember only this. And they probably spent 40 million making the damn thing.
FWIW- I submitted it to Movie Mistakes.