Few experiences in life are more infuriating than injustices fed by extreme prejudice; few struggles more heart-stirring than the battles waged against them.
So why do we sometimes tend to dismiss such stories as corny or simplistic when we see them in movies? “Men of Honor,” director George Tillman Jr.’s epic follow-up to his 1998 family hit, “Soul Food,” is a would-be inspirational biographical movie that really works: the rousing tale of a genuinely heroic real-life subject, retired master chief boatswain’s mate and deep sea diver Carl Brashear. Played with great heart and emotion by Cuba Gooding Jr., Brashear is a role model without alibis: a Kentucky sharecropper’s son who survived poverty and poor education and fought against vicious race-baiting and bigotry to become the U.S. Navy’s first African-American deep sea diver — and then further survived a horrendous injury and amputation, to resume his job and retire as a master chief.
Most of the events in the film, incredible as they seem, are factual — though the movie invents some characters and effectively bathes everything in a romantic epic-movie glow. As director Tillman and screenwriter Scott Marshall Smith tell the story, it’s a classic saga of overcoming obstacles: We follow Brashear from a youth of rural hard times through his enlistment and then his relentless efforts to be accepted into diving school and to resist those trying to sabotage his graduation.
Though “Men of Honor,” as its title suggests, is a male bonding story to the max, Brashear’s near-constant ally is his wife, Jo (Aunjanue Ellis), a librarian and medical student he enlisted to help overcome huge gaps in his education. And his role models are his supportive parents (Carl Lumbly and Lonette McKee, in indelible cameos), summed up in the painful parting counsel of his embittered father. But his perpetual goad is the movie’s one major fictional invention, hard-as-nails master chief and diving instructor Billy Sunday (played by Robert De Niro).
Gooding pours all his empathy and commitment into his part. And it’s a role that really requires commitment — both because Brashear himself is a legendary Navy figure and because Gooding is up against a powerhouse performance by actors’ actor De Niro.
De Niro ignites this movie as Sunday: a fictionalized composite of two of Brashear’s real-life diving teachers/superiors. Sunday is relegated to teaching duties after a gutsy rescue effort irreparably damages his lungs. Hard-drinking, insubordinate, cynical, foul-mouthed, stubborn and supremely brave and tough, Sunday is also an undisguised racist from a background — Southern sharecropping — that almost matches Brashear’s.
Sunday at first baits Brashear by calling him “Cookie,” a derisive reference to the fact that, even in the post-1948 desegregated U.S. Navy, most blacks are relegated to jobs as cooks and stewards. For much of Brashear’s diving school ordeal, Sunday ignores the bigotry of Brashear’s fellow students — all but one of whom (Michael Rapaport as Snowhill) refuse to bunk with him. And even though it alienates his liberal-minded wife, Gwen (Charlize Theron), he follows the racist lead of the demented diving school head, “Mr. Pappy” (another composite, played by Hal Holbrook).
Brashear and Sunday are natural antagonists. The first time we see the hot-tempered Sunday, in fact, he is sitting, bruised and manacled, between two M.P.s watching Brashear’s real-life 1966 dive to help recover four hydrogen bombs lost at sea in a plane collision — the dive that results in his partial leg amputation. The rest of the movie, often in flashback, has them crossing paths fatefully, most excruciatingly when Sunday is ordered to wreck Brashear’s final diving test, most inspiringly at the movie’s climax. We see Sunday gradually becoming Brashear’s champion and friend — and though this aspect of the film is partly a Hollywood concoction, De Niro makes Sunday so striking a character, and his scenes so furiously real, that he sweeps you past any objections.
De Niro pours all his intensity into Sunday, making his scenes quiver with a barely repressed fury, often on the edge of explosion, an edge that recalls his youthful rage in movies like “Mean Streets” and “Taxi Driver.” Whether sucking on the corncob pipe Sunday “won” from Gen. MacArthur or suddenly slugging a smug superior, Sunday becomes one of those full-blooded movie characters who galvanize every scene they’re in.
So does Gooding’s Brashear — but in a different, gentler, more realistic fashion. Gooding mates his own natural ebullience and sweet spirit to Brashear’s fierce stubbornness and his defiance of barriers, making us sympathize with him every step, or dive, of his way. And the movie’s obvious male-bonding theatricality works here because Sunday comes to symbolize every foe Brashear has to confront, every friend he finally makes. Without De Niro, “Men of Honor” might seem saccharine, and Gooding’s marvelously winning performance might seem standard-issue. With Sunday, Brashear’s own suppressed anger is always thrown into relief.
Making an honestly inspirational biographical movie is no easy task, even when the real-life story is as moving as Brashear’s. But Chicago Columbia College graduate Tillman, who has made huge strides in each new movie — his prize-winning short “Paula,” his low-budget debut “Scenes for the Soul,” his 1998 breakthrough “Soul Food” — shows real command, strength and feeling. And, even if “Men of Honor” too often flirts with and sometimes falls for melodrama, it still keeps a tight grip on our sympathies.
The models for “Men of Honor,” I suspect, include that master of the military bio saga, John Ford — whose haunting 1957 “The Wings of Eagles” (with John Wayne as paralyzed naval flier-turned-screenwriter “Spig” Wead) and 1960 “Sergeant Rutledge” (about black U.S. cavalrymen) echo this movie’s epic style and themes, and whose nickname, “Pappy,” oddly adorns the story’s worst racist. Like Ford’s military sagas, this movie celebrates the outsider who has to defy the odds to succeed.
But the real triumph of “Men of Honor” comes from something else: the extraordinary chemistry between Gooding and De Niro and the power of its subject. The real-life Carl Brashear is a hero not just because he was a great diver but also because his story captures so completely the pain or glory of rising up from hardship, of facing prejudice, of single-mindedly pursuing a dream that too often turns into a nightmare, of struggling mightily and never succumbing to the worst that life hurls up. The movie Brashear, as embodied by Gooding — and as caught by Tillman’s robust, lyrical strokes — is a wonderful vessel for that story. You can pay these filmmakers no higher compliment than to say that their movie is worthy of the man who inspired it.
`MEN OF HONOR’
(star)(star)(star)
Directed by George Tillman, Jr.; written by Scott Marshall Smith; photographed by Anthony B. Richmond; edited by John Carter; production designed by Leslie Dilley; music by Mark Isham; produced by Robert Teitel, Bill Badalato. A 20the Century Fox release; opens Friday. Running time: 2:09. MPAA rating: R (language).
THE CAST
Carl Brashear ………….. Cuba Gooding, Jr.
Billy Sunday …………… Robert De Niro
Gwen Sunday ……………. Charlize Theron
Jo Brashear ……………. Aunjanue Ellis
Mr. Pappy ……………… Hal Holbrook
Snowhill ………………. Michael Rapaport
Captain Pullman ………… Powers Boothe
Captain Hartigan ……….. David Keith
