female lead and so says that women can be equal to men, but it does so by placing that woman in a male action movie setting and so reinforces part of the stereotype it challenges.
The main character, Jordan O'Neil, says, "I'm not interested in being some poster girl for women's rights." Yet, that is precisely what she is being made to be both by certain political powers in the film and by the filmmakers. Lt. O'Neil is hardly a retiring woman even before she enters the training program for Navy Seals--she works at naval intelligence headquarters and has risen far in the ranks to do so. She faces the fact that there is no true equality for women in the armed forces, of course, and her effort to become a Navy Seal is her way of challenging this truth. The film uses this as its framework for challenging the existing male structure and for asserting tha
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