This 79% Rotten Tomatoes Richard Gere and Debra Winger Romance Is Charming a New Streaming Platform This Month

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An Officer and a Gentleman

Among the all-time great years for cinema, few can boast the murderer's row of titles that 1982 can. From John Carpenter's cult classic horror masterpiece The Thing to Ridley Scott's Bladerunner, Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy, and Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extraterrestrial, there is no shortage of titles that are not only great but remarkably influential. Alongside those monolithic classics, a little $7.5 million romance flick released to rapturous praise and Oscar nominations, even being hailed as one of the year's best films and earning a memorable reference in The Simpsons. That film is An Officer and a Gentleman, directed by Taylor Hackford and starring Richard Gere and Debra Winger. Now, the charming classic is available to stream on Paramount+ to start the New Year with a bit of love and drama.

In addition to being a romance, An Officer and a Gentleman is also a coming-of-age story centered around Zach Mayo (Gere), a troubled adolescent with a bad attitude who aims to join the Navy like his father. The Aviation Academy shakes up his worldview, however, when he encounters the no-nonsense Sgt. Emil Foley (Louis Gossett Jr.). Under Foley's strict tutelage, he learns some hard lessons about life and relating to others, though he truly begins to recenter himself upon meeting his first real girlfriend in the young townie, Paula (Winger). Through the two of them, he starts to understand what he wants out of life and who he wants to be to the people around him.

Winger and Gere were the heart and soul of the film, but it was Gossett Jr. who would get the highest honor in the end. For his role as Foley, he won not only a Golden Globe but a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, making history as the first African American actor to ever win in the category. Winger also secured a nomination from the Academy Awards, with other nods coming for Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Score and a win for the song "Up Where We Belong." The Blue Lagoon and The Scarlet Letter writer Douglas Day Stewart penned the script for An Officer and a Gentlemen, while the cast was rounded out by David Keith, Lisa Blount, Robert Loggia, and Lisa Eilbacher, among others.

'An Officer and a Gentleman' Was a Critical Darling and a Box Office Smash

The low budget for An Officer and a Gentleman made its box office haul all the more colossal. It scored $190 million, becoming the third-highest-grossing hit of the year. Although it's since been overshadowed by the other behemoths that came out in 1982, critics both then and now have praised Hackford's work to the tune of a 79% score on Rotten Tomatoes. For the director, it remains one of his best-received features, though he would go on to helm another Oscar-nominated flick in the 2004 biopic Ray.

An Officer and a Gentleman is now available to watch on Paramount+. Stay tuned here at Collider for more on all the films coming to and leaving streaming throughout the year.