Men of Honor

Men of Honor is a film about one remarkable man and his determination to succeed when it seems that the whole world is against him. Cuba Gooding Jr. plays Carl Brashear, the son of a hardworking farmer who, just after the war, joins the navy with the aim of becoming a high-ranking diver. Carl has been raised to believe in himself, and to work hard to achieve his goals in life, but there is one problem. Carl is black, and in the fifties, being a black man in the navy meant you were probably going to be working in the galley. But Carl demonstrates that he has what it takes to become a diver in the US navy, and he signs up at the diving school where he is to train under Master Chief Billy Sunday, played by Robert De Niro. Unfortunately, Sunday is bitter about having recently lost his job as a diver for medical reasons, and he takes his anger out on Carl. What’s more, everyone in the squad apart from one man, Snowhill, played by Michael Rapaport, refuses to share a dorm with Carl, simply because he’s black. Because Snowhill likes Carl, Sunday takes his aggression out on him, too. As the film proceeds, we get to see the incredible lengths some people will go to in the name of racism. The commanding officer of the group is an old fogy who would prefer to see Carl die than pass his diving exam, and when Carl does pass, Sunday is reprimanded. Although Sunday started out as racist as the others, he changes his mind when he sees just how good a diver Carl is, and by the end of the film, he’s actually helping Carl to pursue his career.

Men of Honor is a very enjoyable film, although maybe a tad overlong at two hours eight minutes. The performances are very good all round, especially that of Gooding and De Niro. What I liked most about the film was the fact that Carl Brashear simply would not take ‘no’ for an answer. He quietly yet firmly insisted on taking his rightful place alongside people who seemed to hate him, simply because he believed that he could do the job better than anyone else. Even when his leg was almost ripped off in an accident, he insisted on continuing his career, right to the point where he requested an amputation because that would increase his chances of getting back in a diving suit.