Herald rating: * *
Cast: Cuba Gooding jun, Robert De Niro
Director: George Tillman jun.
Running time: 130 mins
Rating: M
Now showing: Village, Hoyts
Review: Peter Calder
As ponderous and portentous as its title, this old-fashioned and ostentatiously stirring military adventure smells suspiciously like a puff piece for the US Navy, which took some bad PR
hits for racism and sexism in the 90s.
It's "based on the life of" (a phrase which should serve as warning enough) Carl Brashear (Gooding), the son of a dirt-poor Kentucky sharecropper and the first Afro-American to ascend to the elite of navy divers.
Along the way he encounters the antagonism (and, surprise, surprise, earns the respect) of his peers and of the school's commanding officer, Master Diver Billy Sunday (De Niro), a profane corncob-pipe-smoking martinet who resents Brashear because he reminds him of his own poor roots.
As one might expect of a film that includes such exchanges of dialogue as "Why do you want this so much?" "Because I can't have it," every manipulative plot element slots into place with an almost audible clunk. As a result Brashear's remarkable story - his triumphs over adversity included the courageous decision to have an injured leg amputated so that he could have the chance to return to active duty - is quite drained of passion and becomes as sentimentally bloodless as a greeting card.
Meanwhile, Mark Isham's thunderous score ensures that at each moment we know how to feel - inspired, scared or moved.
The 1950s period design is impressive - these divers wear the big Jules Verne-style brass suits - but some of the action is ludicrous (did they really look for a lost nuke by sending one diver to stroll around the sea floor?). Many of the set pieces are overcooked to mush and Tillman's direction is at best workmanlike.
In all it seems quaintly anachronistic and has nothing of the resonance of, say, A Few Good Men. Acting talents like De Niro and Gooding were wasted on this one.
