Shipping Out With Demi

See Jane run. See Jane do backbreaking calisthenics that would challenge Jackie Chan. See Jane break the nose of a guy who doubts that she’s for real. See Jane . . . well, you get the idea.

“G.I. Jane” stars Demi Moore as a naval intelligence officer who is tough the way other people think they’re tough, someone for whom, the ads correctly insist, “failure is not an option.” It shows why Moore is indisputably a star and why the studios have difficulty knowing what to do with her. Determination made her, and determination is increasingly the only quality she is comfortable with on screen.

It’s not as if we’ve never had tough women in the movies before, but they’ve rarely had the physicality of a Joan Crawford in combat boots that Moore supplies. As Lt. Jordan O’Neil, the actress looks especially fierce, projecting an intensity that is strong enough to touch. It’s no surprise that co-screenwriter (with David Twohy) and co-executive producer Danielle Alexander created this role with Moore in mind.

In previous films, whether facing down sleazeballs in “Striptease” or taking on the entire Puritan establishment in “The Scarlet Letter,” Moore’s determination has been so focused it’s crossed over into the unintentionally funny. The military nature of “G.I. Jane” allows the actress to be as hard as she wants to be, but it also points up how lacking in a human component her recent roles, including this one, have become. Act like the Terminator long enough and that’s who you turn into.

Though the responsible parties insist this film deals with the timely and substantial issue of women in the military, that’s more or less window dressing. “G.I. Jane” is a traditional star vehicle joined to an old-fashioned combat movie, with only a female lead and the change in standards for language, nudity and violence giving away its modern origins.

“G.I. Jane” begins on Capitol Hill, at confirmation hearings for a new Secretary of the Navy run by Sen. Lillian DeHaven (Anne Bancroft with a hollow corn pone accent), a crafty old bird from Texas who soon turns things into a forum about sexual equality in that branch of the service. If women measure up to the men, she querulously demands, why can’t they be eligible for all jobs, even combat positions? Why not indeed?

The good ole boys in the Navy offer to use their highly competitive SEALs unit as a test case, a place that has a dropout rate of 60% while attracting the best of the best. “No woman’s going to last a week,” these macho oafs chortle. Clearly, they’ve reckoned without Our Ms. Moore.

Introduced as a highly competent intelligence officer, Lt. O’Neil is tapped by the senator because she looks good in a bathing suit. Though her boyfriend Royce (Jason Beghe) worries about her hanging out with guys capable of “eating cornflakes out of your skull,” and she herself has doubts about being “a poster girl for women’s rights,” the lieutenant agrees because, well, a woman has to do what a woman has to do.

Once O’Neil gets involved in “the most intensive military training known to man,” everything that happens to her is a well-thumbed cliche, from the guys who treat her as a sex object to the black candidate who makes a speech about the varieties of prejudice to Master Chief John Urgayle (Viggo Mortensen), the icy instructor who reads D.H. Lawrence and J.M. Coetzee in his spare time. Could the master chief have a thing for initials? Stay tuned.

Still, in the hands of director Ridley Scott, the training the SEALs go through is the film’s most successful aspect. One of the best shooters around, Scott (“Alien,” “Blade Runner”), working here with cinematographer Hugh Johnson, is most comfortable with the physical aspects of the film, and the panorama of purposeful chaos he creates is “G.I. Jane” at its most involving.

Even this aspect, however, starts to fall apart after O’Neil cuts her own hair off and the training enters a more serious stage, known (here come those initials again) as S.E.R.E. for “survival, evasion, resistance and escape.” O’Neil’s determination not to get special treatment as a female candidate is put to its sternest test here, leading to unpleasantly graphic physical violence and a shouted obscenity that echoes a line from the Scott-directed “Thelma & Louise.”

But when the machinations of politicians threaten O’Neil’s progress or whenever “G.I. Jane” needs to make plot points the film inevitably wavers. Given that none of the key creative people have either the gift or the concern for creating believable characters, at the times when words need to be more prominent than action, “G.I. Jane” can’t stay involving.

Still, Moore and her demon determination never cease to fascinate and hold the screen. How has an actress who first won hearts in the mushy “Ghost” ended up morphing into someone who is most convincing doing push-ups, an actress who now seems as out of place in a standard romantic embrace as John Wayne did once upon a time? That would be a story well worth the telling.

* MPAA rating: R, for language and combat violence. Times guidelines: a brutal fight involving Jane and a male officer.

‘G.I. Jane’

Demi Moore: Lt. Jordan O’Neil

Viggo Mortensen: Master Chief John Urgayle

Anne Bancroft: Sen. Lillian DeHaven

Jason Beghe: Royce

Scott Wilson: C.O. Salem

In association with Scott Free and Largo Entertainment, a Roger Birnbaum/Scott Free/Moving Pictures production, released by Hollywood Pictures. Director Ridley Scott. Producers Roger Birnbaum, Demi Moore, Suzanne Todd, Ridley Scott. Executive producers Danielle Alexandra, Julie Bergman Sender, Chris Zarpas. Screenplay David Twohy and Danielle Alexandra. Story Danielle Alexandra. Cinematographer Hugh Johnson. Editor Pietro Scalia. Costumes Marilyn Vance. Music Trevor Jones. Production design Arthur Max. Art director Richard Johnson. Set decorator Cindy Carr. Running time: 2 hours, 3 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.