The General's Daughter

The general's daughter, a US Army instructor in psychological warfare, is found naked, strangled and staked to the ground at a Florida military base. Only hours before, she'd stopped by the road to help undercover army cop Travolta with a flat tyre. He'd been staking out an illicit arms sale operation, but his assignment soon switches to the murder investigation, on which he's teamed with fellow MP Stowe, specialist in sexually motivated cases, and Travolta's old flame. Pressure builds to clear it all up 'the army way', so the victim's war hero father (Cromwell) can proceed with his political ambitions - but the discovery that his daughter had been indulging in S&M with a string of male officers does little to shorten the list of suspects. This is intended, presumably, as a hardhitting exposé of sexual misconduct in the military; there's little room for sensitivity, however, in the context of a button pushing Hollywood thriller. The scenes of rape, and the salacious bondage asides, are as much part of the spectacle as the massed helicopters that the budget so indulges. Only when Travolta gets together with Woods (slick psy-ops boss with a secret to hide) does the movie's grasp on its characters kick in.