Miserably contrived, this shift in melodramatic emphasis hinged on a pretext that never made the slightest sense-Will's dopey, unfounded suspicion that the Bear might be playing him false.

But this central issue-the battle to uncover The Ten-inexplicably is reduced to a side issue.Ĭonroy struggled to whip up a new source of intrigue by pitting the hero and his loyal roommates in an unequal battle of nerves against The Ten and their shadowy patrons in the school administration. 'Bear' Berrineau, the gruffly incorruptible commandant, had assigned McLean to keep an eye on the endangered plebe. The story seems to reach a turning point when the hero, a misfit but upstanding senior named Will McLean, discovers The Ten's secluded torture chamber.

Roddam and his screenwriters jettison quite a bit of expendable exposition, notably a romantic subplot of dumbfounding dippiness, but they still can't compensate for the fact that Conroy mislaid the central plot element-the struggle to unmask and discredit a secret society of upperclassmen, known as The Ten, who have dedicated their despicable efforts to railroading the first black cadet at Carolina Military Institute out of school. Pat Conroy's novel 'The Lords of Discipline' was anything but a disciplined novel the new film version, directed by Franc Roddam, the British director who made an impressive debut with 'Quadrophenia,' spares moviegoers a prolonged exposure to Conroy's feverish account of Movies sadism, betrayal and triumphant selfrighteousness in the setting of a Charleston, S.C., military academy in the mid-'60s.

The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy