[3] At the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, Private William Santiago, a United States Marine, is tied up and beaten in the middle of the night.

After he is found dead, Lance Corporal Harold Dawson and Private First Class Louden Downey are accused of his murder and face a court-martial.

Their defense is assigned to United States Navy JAG Corps Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, a callow lawyer with a penchant for plea bargains.

When Kaffee negotiates a plea bargain with the prosecutor, US Marine Judge Advocate Captain Jack Ross, Dawson and Downey refuse, insisting that Kendrick gave them the "code red" order, that they never intended to kill Santiago, and that it would be dishonorable to pursue a plea bargain.

Galloway encourages Kaffee to call Jessep as a witness, despite the risk of being court-martialed for challenging a high-ranking officer without evidence.

Dawson and Downey are cleared of the murder and conspiracy charges but found guilty of "conduct unbecoming" and will be dishonorably discharged.

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin was inspired to write the source play, A Few Good Men, from a phone conversation with his sister Deborah.

A graduate of Boston University Law School, she had signed up for a three-year stint with the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps.

In reality, a code red was allegedly ordered in September 1986 against Private First Class (PFC) William Alvarado, who had written letters to a Texas Congressman and others, complaining of poor conditions and illegal activities on the base, including Marines firing shots across the fence line into Cuba.

His lungs filled with fluid, he spat up blood and began turning purple as he lost consciousness, perhaps because the gag had been soaked in gasoline as an attorney would later allege.

Alvarado was taken to the infirmary before being transferred to a hospital in Miami, Florida, where he—unlike Private William Santiago in A Few Good Men—went on to make a full recovery.

Each of the three managed to retain their status as Marines after being found guilty of lesser offenses and went on to be honorably discharged at the conclusion of their military careers.

"[9] After the release of the film A Few Good Men, five Marines from "The Ten"—Kevin Palermo, Ronald Peterson Jr., Brett Bentley, Dennis Snyder and Christopher Lee Valdez—hired lawyer Gary Patterson and filed a lawsuit in Texas State Court against Castle Rock and other Hollywood companies linked to the film.

[11] He and his roommates had purchased a Macintosh 512K; when he returned home, he would empty his pockets of the napkins and type them into the computer, forming a basis from which he wrote many drafts.

[12] In 1988, Sorkin sold his play's film rights to producer David Brown before it premiered, in a deal reportedly "well into six figures".

[14] Brown was producing a few projects at TriStar Pictures, and tried to interest them in adapting A Few Good Men, but his proposal was declined due to the lack of star actors.

The site's critical consensus reads, "An old-fashioned courtroom drama with a contemporary edge, A Few Good Men succeeds on the strength of its stars, with Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, and especially Jack Nicholson delivering powerful performances that more than compensate for the predictable plot.

[30] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said, "That the performances are uniformly outstanding is a tribute to Rob Reiner (Misery), who directs with masterly assurance, fusing suspense and character to create a movie that literally vibrates with energy.

"[31] Richard Schickel in Time called it "an extraordinarily well-made movie, which wastes no words or images in telling a conventional but compelling story.

"[32] Todd McCarthy in Variety magazine predicted, "The same histrionic fireworks that gripped theater audiences will prove even more compelling to filmgoers due to the star power and dramatic screw-tightening.

"[33] Roger Ebert was less enthusiastic in the Chicago Sun-Times, giving it two-and-a-half out of four stars and finding its major flaw was revealing the courtroom strategy to the audience before the climactic scene between Cruise and Nicholson.

"[34] Widescreenings noted that for Kaffee, "Sorkin interestingly takes the opposite approach of Top Gun", in which Cruise also played the protagonist.

In Top Gun, Cruise plays Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, a "hotshot military underachiever who makes mistakes because he is trying to outperform his late father.

The Double Feature of the film and Jerry Maguire was released on DVD on December 29, 2009, by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.