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Men Of Honor

2000, Movie, R, 129 mins

Men Of Honor: Review

MEN OF HONOR
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Heroes are hard to find, so it feels churlish to carp about a film that tells the true story of sailor Carl Brashear (Cuba Gooding Jr.), who overcame systemic racism to become the U.S. Navy's first African-American deep-sea diver. On the other hand, it's a little odd that nobody involved — certainly not screenwriter Scott Marshall Smith or director George Tillman Jr. — seems to have noticed that it's also the story of a guy who literally cut off a limb to achieve a career goal. No disrespect to the real-life Brashear intended, but reasonable viewers might see this act as more masochistic and creepy than uplifting. In fact, the film raises all sorts of questions it seems disinclined to answer. Like, why do doctors let Brashear amputate an only slightly injured leg? Nary a clue is offered. What keeps Brashear's sadistic, racist training officer (Robert De Niro) and his gorgeous younger wife (Charlize Theron) together? Ditto. And, most crucially, what does the title mean? If most of the characters are creeps and there's nothing inherently honorable about self-mutilation, who are these honorable men? To be fair, the actors are by and large terrific, including a shockingly ancient-looking Hal Holbrook in the role of another sadistic, racist officer. The underwater sequences are both spectacular and scary; for what it's worth, this is the first film in recent memory whose hero gets run over by a submarine. But at a certain point, it's hard not to compare Gooding's character to Lemuel Pitkin, the Candide-ish protagonist of Nathaniel West's A Cool Million, whose good cheer increases exponentially as his arms and legs are hacked off. By the film's big finale, which involves Brashear walking, Frankenstein's monster-style, across a courtroom while wearing a 200-pound diving suit, the whole thing has begun to feel distinctly ridiculous. leave a comment --Steve Simels
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