One of the few unnecessary scenes in the movie is a closing one of Foley, one that proves to the audience that his punishment of the recruits is perfectly calculated to bring out the best in them. As Foley, he's a startling, sarcastic taskmaster, but beneath all those insults he has the dyed-in-the-wool decency that characterizes virtually everybody (with one notable exception) in the film. Gossett, always a good supporting player, is this time a star. When Zack is finally pushed to the limit by Sergeant Foley, and he must beg Foley not to boot him out of the corps, he screams: ''Don't you do it! I got nowhere else to go!'' If the audience doesn't believe this, the movie is lost, but Mr. Gere has never been this affecting before there's an urgency to his performance, some of it visibly induced by the hard physical work of the basic-training sequences, that cuts right through his manner of detachment.
The best thing about ''An Officer and a Gentleman'' is the level of acting that is sustained throughout, particularly in the key performances of Mr. Even when it occasionally pushes its cliches too far - as it does in a subplot about Sid's love affair with a gold-digging doxy - the movie never loses its powerful grip on the viewer's emotions. Taylor Hackford, who previously directed ''The Idolmaker,'' brings to this film a warmth and meticulousness that shows in its every aspect. Stewart's Navy experience (he himself attended Officer Candidate School) and on his knowledge of how the most successful old military movies worked their magic. The screenplay, by Douglas Day Stewart, draws equally strongly on Mr. Instead, it relies on the strength of these stereotypes to build a conventional but hugely compelling drama.
You don't need a crystal ball to guess how any of these people will affect Zack, or roughly how the story will go ''An Officer and a Gentleman'' isn't a movie that trades heavily in surprises. There, he meets three people who will become very important to him: Sergeant Foley (Louis Gossett Jr.), the drill instructor whose methods are the shrewdest and the toughest Sid Worley (David Keith), the small-town buddy who isn't as self-sufficient as Mayo and Paula (Debra Winger), the spunky, seductive local girl just waiting for the right cadet to come along. The first scenes of the movie tell of Zack's troubled childhood and make the film a little slow to get started, but the focus soon shifts to the business at hand: Zack's basic training at Naval Aviation Officer Candidate School. ''An Officer and a Gentleman,'' which opens today at the Coronet and other theaters, is the story of Zack Mayo (Richard Gere), who enlists in the Navy as a last-ditch attempt to make something of himself. If this summer hasn't previously had a wonderful Hollywood love story to call its own, it has one now. But that doesn't keep ''An Officer and a Gentleman'' from being a first-rate movie - a beautifully acted, thoroughly involving romance. Undeniably, there's an element of corniness to this. In this resolutely old-fashioned Navy tale, a selfish, hard-hearted loner becomes a much, much better man, thanks to the rigors of basic training and the love of a good woman. THE hero of ''An Officer and a Gentleman'' is neither of those things when the movie begins, but he is both by the time it is over.
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