It can be difficult to film a true story, especially one with great possibility for bathos, and do it cleanly and effectively. "Men of Honor," from most reports, has done just that.
Cuba Gooding Jr. stars as real life Carl Brashear, the first African American to become a master diver in the Navy. Robert De Niro stars as fictional Bill Sunday, an invention said to shore up Gooding's role, and give more texture to the movie. Sunday is simultaneously Brashear's most vicious adversary, and loyal supporter, and scene stopper. ( De Niro has long had the reputation of an "actor's actor.")
Of course, it's a male bonding outing, but with a difference – some say, class. Sunday is actually a composite of two of Brashear's real life diving teachers. He is "hard-drinking, foul mouth, stubborn, brave and tough." In short, what more could one ask? Oh yes, he's also a racist.
Brashear has grown up in the sharecropper south, and has one ambition – to get into Navy diving school, which even in the 1948 desegregated Navy, most blacks were given a hard time and relegated to cooks and stewards jobs.
Brashear survives all the bigotry and becomes a diver only to suffer a horrendous accident and amputation and wind up as master chief. Gooding puts total commitment into his part, as well he should when up against De Niro. The two have excellent backup with Hal Holbrook, Charlize Theron and Michael Rapaport. It is directed by George Tillman Jr., and rated R for language.
It starts Thursday at Market Square East.
