Die Kadetten von Bunker Hill (1981)

Die Kadetten von Bunker Hill: Directed by Harold Becker. With George C. Scott, Timothy Hutton, Ronny Cox, Sean Penn. Military cadets take extreme measures to ensure the future of their academy when its existence is threatened by local condo developers.

“Having graduated from a military academy and later joining army ROTC myself it was almost like I was living back at my high school again. Especially due to the fact that I was a company commander my senior year and had my best friends as platoon leaders and XO. I got a much different take on the movie than most of you. It is one that was much more prevalent in the military academy I to than ROTC. Rather than a view of u0026quot;misguided youthsu0026quot; (I would argue the point that they were misguided) I saw the movie as fight between the old and the new. The old conservative ways versus the post Vietnam War era generation. Whether to preserve conservative tradition or to continue with social liberalism. In the movie the fight was about tearing down the academy to build condominiums. In real life where I was, it was about turning our military academy into a normal prep school. In my case the fight didnu0026#39;t get violent, however like the cadets in the movie I picked the losing side.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIn the movie I was heart broken that the governor would send troops to the school rather than try and work out a peaceful compromise when he saw the measure that people were willing to go to in order to protect their school. In real life I was very disheartened to see the old cadre of retired military officers get sacked and replaced by u0026quot;softu0026quot; civilian administrators. It all hit a climax when one of my lifeu0026#39;s role models, a retired USAF Major and our companies tactical officer, spoke out against some of the changes being made and got himself sacked. For me that was George C Scott, Penn and Cruise were my friends and platoon leaders in my company and the crisis between the old ways and the new ways were very much the same. The movie reached out to me possibly more than any other. It was seeing my teenage self all over again.”