Men of Honor

Based upon the life of Carl Brashear, who was the first African American to become a Navy master diver, “Men of Honor” musters up enough heart and spirit for ten movies. Though it doesn’t fire on all cylinders dramatically, it’s a worthwhile effort about a man who overcomes institutional racism in the Navy to achieve his dream. Young Carl grew up dirt poor as a sharecropper’s son. As the movie has it, from the time he was a child he had a fascination with the water, jumping into the local swimming hole with abandon and playing in the rusted cars on the bottom. Carl enlists in the Navy but discovers to his dismay that the opportunities open to Black men in the military are limited to menial tasks, just like in civilian life. He is assigned to the galley on the ship Hoist. One day, Carl flouts the rules by taking a swim on a whites-only swimming day. His swimming ability catches the attention of Captain Pullman (Booth) who gives him a chance, however small, to move up the naval ladder. It is also on the Hoist that Carl first encounters Billy Sunday (DeNiro), a fire breathing, tough-as-nails Master Diver.

After seeing Sunday in action, Carl decides that he wants to be a diver, too, and convinces Booth to transfer him to the diving school in Bayonne, New Jersey. The film follows Carl’s exploits in diving school, where he outclasses every other student with his natural gifts and intense work ethic. At the same time, he must contend with blatant racism at the school, where, by coincidence, Billy Sunday is now an instructor. (This is pure fiction, by the way, since Sunday is actually a composite of several figures Carl encountered in real life.) Sunday is no more fond of Blacks in his program than anyone else at the school, including the crazed Mr. Pappy (Holbrook), a decorated but insane officer (think Captain Queeg), who is winding down his career as the school’s commander. Mr. Pappy and Sunday agree that Carl will never graduate from the program, no matter how well he performs, and they take steps to ensure that he fails. The film depicts a test of wills between Carl and Sunday, and if you don’t know who emerges victorious, you don’t go to the movies enough. Carl has only a few allies, the stuttering Snowhill (a misused Rapaport), and Jo (Ellis), the librarian and medical student who helps Carl prepare for his exams, then ultimately marries him.

Thrown into this mix is Gwen (Charlize Theron, who has a similarly thin role in the current “The Legend of Bagger Vance”), Sunday’s unexpectedly glamorous wife. The relationship between Sunday and Gwen is an underdeveloped side show that does nothing to advance the film. In fact, De Niro’s role in general distracts from the main themes of the picture. He is intense, perhaps to a fault, chewing the scenery in a performance that is most reminiscent of his turn as an obsessed convict in the remake of “Cape Fear” (even the accent sounds the same). The filmmakers are intent upon beefing up Sunday’s role, turning him into a dreadful alcoholic, whom we get to watch go through detox before the film ends. I guess that is what you have to do when a bona fide movie star agrees to appear in your picture, but in many ways it would have been better to cast an unknown in the role, keeping Sunday the supporting player he should have been. It would have been satisfying enough to see Carl triumph over terrible discrimination and adversity in order to graduate from diving school, but the movie insists on following him through the next phase of his career. At this point, you can feel the air start to hiss out of the theater.

Carl earns a post as a diver, and begins what seems destined to be a distinguished career. Then, he sustains an injury which threatens to end his diving forever, and he is pressured to retire. But he refuses to accept the limitations of the injury, and fights for his right to stay on active duty. So now, having completed a battle against race discrimination, he must battle discrimination against the disabled. Even if historically true, that’s a lot of noble battling for one movie. In another melodramatic twist, Billy Sunday returns, dried out and cleaned up, and apparently full of remorse for the shabby way he treated Carl back in diving school. He takes Carl’s side in his battle for reinstatement, pulling strings with the brass, and training him to pass the physical test that is required to return to duty. As one might expect, Carl rises to the occasion, completing the Herculean task set forth for him by the sneering, arrogant Captain Hanks (Conrad) who serves as a proxy for insufferable brass throughout the picture. The final challenge, in a courtroom no less, gives the phrase “12-step program” new meaning.

Unfortunately, it also gives a certain resonance to the phrase “Hollywood ending.” The impact of “Men of Honor” is undercut not only by DeNiro’s over-the-top performance, but also by Gooding’s overly modulated one. He shows none of the fire that earned him an Oscar for his role in “Jerry Maguire.” His saint-like Brashear is noble to a fault, a paragon of virtue. I cannot say what Brashear is like in real life, but in a way, the portrayal seems unfair, because it implies that only superhuman character can be rewarded. Seeing Brashear as human, with human faults and weaknesses, would have added depth and power to the story. It would take a cold heart not to be inspired by Carl Brashear’s various triumphs, and it’s hard to fault the people who made the picture for being enamored of the story. But the movie drags on too long, grasping for more significance than perhaps is justified. There are worthy themes here--the cancer that is racism, and the ability of a man to triumph over adversity by sheer force of will--and the movie gets an “A” for effort on that basis alone. But good intentions do not a great film make, and “Men of Honor,” while not without its virtues, never quite achieves that rank. (11/18/00)