Cast:
Robert De Niro (Master Chief Leslie 'Billy' Sunday), Cuba Gooding Jr (Boatswain's Mate Second Class Carl Brashear), Charlize Theron (Gwen Sunday), Aunjanue Ellis (Jo Brashear), Hal Holbrook (Mr. Pappy), Michael Rapaport (Gunners Mate Snowhill), Powers Boothe (Captain Pullman), David Keith (Captain Hartigan), Holt McCallany (Machinist's Mate First Class Dylan Rourke), and David Conrad (Captain Hanks) Directed by George Tillman Jr.
Review:
"I realized that some of these aspects related to my path as a filmmaker. And I believe audiences will find a part of themselves in Carl - the best part of themselves - perhaps the part they haven't used lately."
George Tillman Jr wanted to make movies from a young age. The Milwaukee native was shooting things he saw with a 8mm camera he borrowed from his father as a child, but it was the viewing of films such as Five on the Black Hand Side (1973), Claudine (1974), and Cooley High (1975) that inspired him to enter the world of filmmaking. He studied film and video at Columbia College in Chicago before moving into a partnership with a fellow classmate with Robert Teitel in Menagerie Films, a directing and producing partnership. Through years of rising from production assistant to writing/directing his own script, Soul Food (1997) became a hit. Tillman has so far directed seven theatrical films while also serving as a producer on a variety of films, and this is his second overall film, for which he was attracted to the story of Carl Brashear. The son of a sharecropper that did not graduate high school, he was the first African-American graduate of the United States Navy Diving & Salvage School, having done so in 1954 after enlisting in the Navy six years prior. Sixteen years later, having overcome an accident that lost him a leg to be recertified as a diver, he became a U.S. Navy master diver. The path to making a film of Brashear started in 1980 (right after retiring from service) that bounced around from contract deals to a script in 1994 for Paramount Pictures that stalled until it went into the hands of Teitel and Tillman Jr. Budget haggling was a step to overcome alongside getting actors to appear, so here we are with a $32 million film with two Academy Award winners for stars.
There is likely a good reason that this film stood on my shelf for over a decade, because I do know my dad favored certain films that involved the military in some way or just had a good story to tell. Somewhere, in that mindset of 129 minutes spent with this film, is a struggle for something better than average when it comes to a biopic that has an interesting juggling act between its stars. On the one hand, it does manage to accomplish one basic fact: It tells the story of a man who persisted onto his goal no matter what challenge came his way (whether prejudice or one good leg), and it does so with just enough interest to hear more about the story that will likely be enough to overcome its shortcomings for those who are interested in what it wants to say. The sticking point one might have is the very fact that it is a modestly average affair all the way around when it comes to being a conventional biopic, one that just manages to not diffuse itself in tension only because the main two actors do fine enough with the material while the action in the water is at least somewhat interesting to sit through. It is as if someone wanted to make a 50s style drama biopic, one with challenges to overcome while other folks dote on them. In that sense, De Niro does just fine with what he is given, trying to toe the line between hard-driving mentor and maniac without playing to the angle of biopic scene-chewing camp. Granted, it is an angle that can only go so far in middling depth, but De Niro at least seems game for doing it straight rather than playing it off for an unintentional laugh. Gooding Jr (who found himself playing quite a few historical figures in the next few years) does well enough in his own distinct path in playing off courage and interest in the main subject without becoming just a man in a suit, one that has to deal with underwater action with patience alongside other moments that he is fairly up to task for. Theron and Ellis compliment the two in the moments away from the water with adequate results. Honestly, one wonders if there was more of the eccentric Holbrook left on the cutting floor, one who has exactly one scene of focus involving his eccentricities (alongside racism). Rapaport is there for basically three scenes as a counterpart for Gooding Jr that comes and goes.
Of course there are a few embellishments from history to fiction, and at least the film had the participation of the Navy. One particular name comes up with Alberto José do Nascimento, a Brazilian diver who was the only one to support Brashear, complete with being the only one to bunk with him (as opposed to the stutterer played by Rapaport). Of course, De Niro is playing a composite character of people that Brashear dealt with, and the whole episode involving a bar dispute settled with submerging one's head in water apparently didn't happen either. As for the amputation...well it wasn't because he wanted to go right back to the Navy but with a prosthetic - he was plagued by necrosis and infection (with a possibility of keeping the leg, but with a brace, not a cane). At any rate, it is a film of process for diving rather than big moments, building to its rise and fight again type of mantra with reasonable finish. Is it great? Not by any means, but it gets the job done in portraying a useful moment in history with a reasoned cast and director to reach the levels it wants without sinking, and that should be more than enough in the end.
Next Time: Closing time hits soon, but it's time for Selma.
Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.
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