Running time: 129 minutes
Starring: Robert De Niro, Cuba Gooding Jr., Charlize Theron, Aunjanue Ellis, Hal Holbrook, Michael Rapaport, Powers Boothe, David Keith
Rating 7 out of 10
Spike Lee has made a career out of exploring racial prejudice and the social injustices suffered by blacks in America. Over the years his increasingly extreme stance has alienated growing sections of the public until he now finds himself preaching to the converted. Men Of Honour, directed by George Tillman Jr (Soul Food), deals with racial discrimination and intolerance within the U.S. military, but does its preaching at the service of entertainment rather than at its expense. Men Of Honour is based on the true story of Carl Brashear, the first African American to become a diver in the U.S. Navy. Cuba Gooding Jr. plays Brashear, a sharecropper's son whose father's parting words as Carl boards the bus to enlist are to never give up. It is this sentiment that sustains Brashear in the face of the blatant racial discrimination he encounters within the U.S. Navy of the 1950's.
Unprepared to accept the role of cook or valet traditionally occupied by African Americans Brashear requests a transfer to the navy's diving school, a request finally granted on the understanding that as the first black to enter the all-white domain of diving school he has little if no chance of graduating. His instructor is the bigoted and ruthless Master Chief Billy Sunday (De Niro) who makes Carl as welcome as a bride on a stag night. The abrasive and defiant Sunday was considered the navy's top diver until an accident forced him to quit and become an instructor, a role he treats with the same contempt he shows his students.
Brashear finds obstacles at every turn and with his poor education threatening his expulsion, he goes to the library to seek help and finds it in the shape of an aspiring medical student Jo (Aunjanue Ellis) who agrees to help him study. It's a relationship that inevitably develops beyond tuition.
An interesting note is that the film was provisionally known as The Diver. Considering it's based on Brashear's life, its transition to Men Of Honour and the elevation of the fictitious Sunday's role indicates that perhaps the filmmakers weren't convinced that Brashear's story could single-handedly sustain the movie. By including Sunday's story, complete with his struggles with alcoholism and his turbulent marriage to Gwen (Theron) the film becomes more of an action drama than a straight bio-pic of Brashear's personal crusade. Striking a successful balance is a problem they haven't always overcome and despite the film's length, it never becomes clear whether Brashear is more interested in diving or defeating the sceptics.
Brasher's relationship with Sunday, built on a volatile foundation of resentment and admiration, is punctuated with deliberately rousing exhanges. When Sunday asks what it was his father had told him that kept him going, he replies, "to be the best".
As an actor Gooding Jr has a limited palette to draw upon, lacking the depth to be truly convincing, but whenever you begin to doubt him, that flashing smile defies you. De Niro chooses to play Sunday as large as he can this side of becoming comical. His southern accent spews from a slanted mouth perpetually stuffed with a pipe like Popeye's. So, while he flirts with becoming a parody of himself, he is still able to succeed on his pure genius.
Men Of Honour is one of those big, brazen melodramas Hollywood excels at. They avoid subtlety at all costs and just when you think they can't lay on the sentiment any more thickly, a bus load of plasterers show up. It engages you, entertains you and while it won't have Spike Lee smiling (an oxymoron, perhaps), it still makes you appreciate how one man's courage and determination can make a difference.
