Renaissance Man
A down‑on‑his‑luck ex‑advertising executive takes a job teaching critical thinking to undisciplined Army recruits, only to battle bureaucratic chaos and resistant soldiers as he races to prove his unconventional methods can turn them into competent fighters.
“One man's mission to teach the few, the proud... The impossible!”
Synopsis
A man working in advertising begins a gradual decline. After being fired from his position in Detroit, he enrolls for unemployment benefits. Eventually, he is assigned a new job: teaching thinking skills to Army recruits. When he arrives at the military base, he discovers that no structure has been established for the course.
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 22
These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.
Why a floor?
This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.
Craft leads on file
Edited by George BowersShot by Adam GreenbergScored by Hans ZimmerDesigned by Geoffrey Kirkland
Box Office
1994 · Box office
📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.6× its budget
Why 2.5×?
Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).
Worldwide gross
$24.3M
Opening weekend: $5.6M — 23% of its US run.
Opening week (7-day): $8.2M — 34% of its US & Canada run.
Peak 1,764 theaters
Also known as
- Mr. Billde
- Opération Shakespearefr
- Mezzo professore tra i marinesit
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Cast & Crew
22 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Danny Devito
as Bill Rago
Gregory Hines
as Sergeant Cass
James Remar
as Captain Tom Murdoch
Ed Begley Jr
as Jack Markin
Lillo Brancato
as Pvt. Donnie Benitez
Stacey Dash
as Pvt. Miranda Myers
Kadeem Hardison
as Pvt. Jamaal Montgomery
Richard T Jones
as Pvt. Jackson Leroy
Khalil Kain
as Pvt. Roosevelt Nathaniel Hobbs
Peter Simmons
as Pvt. Brian Davis, Jr.
Directors
1Writers
1Producers
4Other crew
6Parents Guide
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Live · bot-verified- Prime VideoStream
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