This picture sounds realistically profane and has a dark, grainy surface, and by Hollywood standards, it's strong, adult material, but the mechanism is a vise for our emotions -- the mechanism is schlock.

Add immaculate casting, a noteworthy debut for cinematographer Michael Chapman, and a spare and subtle score by Johnny Mandel, and you're left with a gem of a film.

Meadows' 1st beer(s), 1st joint, 1st sexual experience, 1st attempt at assertiveness... represent not just a concentrated and expedited coming-of-age narrative, but also an elegy for a nation's broader loss of innocence in its military excursions.

…Hal Ashby's The Last Detail is a 70’s classic, tough, moving and with a thoughtful, humanistic spirit behind the brutal, irreverent exterior; beloved by the public or not, it’s a genuine classic of its era…