MEN OF HONOUR

Directed by George Tillman Jr. Starring Robert deNiro, Cuba Gooding Jr., Charlize Theron, Michael Rapaport

Lame, formulaic and just a teensy shade on the schmaltzy side, Men Of Honour is one of these excruciatingly dull, quasi-topical based-on-a-true-story affairs that the US public lap up so eagerly: it might have made for a passable midweek TV movie, but it’s nowhere near substantial enough to sustain a two-hours-plus cinematic outing.

Carl Brashear (Cuba Gooding Jr.) joins the US Navy in 1948, just after that nice man President Truman has abolished segregation in the armed forces. In practise, this means that black Americans can work their way up through the ranks from mere toilet-cleaning to accomplished burger-flipping, provided they apply the right degree of dedication and graft.

However, poor Carl is haunted by his impoverished dirt-farmer Daddy’s advice against ending up like him, so he embarks upon a career in deep-sea diving. He perseveres, and in 1952 becomes the first non-white to be accepted into the Navy’s diving school. From this point on, the guy is beset by an avalanche of misfortunes: he faces institutionalised racism from fellow trainees who address him as an ‘uppity nigger’, and from ultra-sadistic good ol’ boy Master Chief Billy Sunday (deNiro).

Carl’s unswerving devotion to duty and impeccable aquatic performances eventually earn the respect of his tormentor-in-chief, and following his inevitable graduation to a vainglorious career, the latter gets fired and takes refuge in the bottle. The pair are re-united in 1966 after Carl loses a leg doing his bit for the Cold War cause, when he and Sunday form an unlikely alliance against pencil-pushing Navy bureaucrats in order to have Carl reinstated to active duty, and redeem Sunday’s tainted rep.

Thus, Men Of Honour is not so much an against-all-odds movie as two against-all-odds movies, played out at a pace that stops well short of breakneck speed – and its generic confines ensure a total predictability from start to finish. No movie cliche is left unturned, from the syrupy background violins to the melodramatic military hearing – and in one of his most lamentable turns yet, deNiro plays Sunday as a ludicrous parodic cross-breed of Cape Fear’s Max Cady and Bugs Bunny’s Sammity Sam.

Men Of Honour’s presentation of segregation is consistently airbrushed throughout, while the lead character’s determination is never adequately examined or explained – he comes across as driven and ambitious but never especially sympathetic, while his wife and kids seem as loved and wanted as a nasty case of the bends. Finally, director Tillman makes a laughably piss-poor mess of what are supposed to be action scenes.

A remarkable life-story done a grave

cinematic injustice. Absolute bollocks, in

fact.