Well, we have all seen this movie, before in some fashion or another. You just plug in new characters, settings and story and you just end up with the same predictable hollywood slop that’s just meaningless and had been used so many times, I can’t remember.
Why does Hollywood even bothering to make sure the audience is aware that movies are true stories, when its so loosely based on the life of Carl Brashear that you could have gave Cuba superpowers to play the character.
You could actually break this movie into two parts, one where Carl is training in diving school but was lackluster at best and the last half that completely fell apart because it showed a total lack of character and story development as well as the meaningless and empty sub-plots that made the film disjointed and awkward.
OVERALL
True stories aren’t about just one person overcoming impossible odds to accomplish some goal or dream anymore. No, the only reason these grand unoriginal movies are made is just to highlight and showcase actors that are already established and are high quality actors.
They made sure in the trailer that you were aware that both Deniro and Gooding Jr were academy award winners. It’s like they were saying, Our story sucks and is borrowed from everything else so lets get good actors to cover it up.
Granted you always want to see such great actors in roles but when you have an actor along the lines of Deniro, you think he would pick better challenging parts than this.But of course it’s Deniro’s performance that makes this movie entertaining and it’s a shame that he isn’t aided my a good story. Granted the main role belongs to Cuba, but his acting is about the same as his other roles, doesn’t give anything more than expected.
PLOT
The whole story of the movie is Carl Brashear’s quest in becoming a master diver, the highest honor. During this goal he has to overcome racism and the standard hollywood movie cliches that’s in every movie like this. During the film the character takes all of the abuse and fights impossible odds to reach his goal.
The audience, unless there not paying attention, is pretty much aware what’s going to happen before it does because it’s too predictable. Productions anymore are just too lazy to think of anything new and original to
try
CHARACTERS
For the most part the movie makes you concentrate on the major characters on Sunday and Brashear because the other secondary characters are so unrealistic and undeveloped there not worth the screen time. Michael Rapaport plays a fellow diving student who’s the only person that will talk to Carl, like we didn’t see this coming in this kind of movie.
Would someone explain to me why Rapaport’s dialogue is filled with a sad display of stuttering. This makes no sense at all, It’s okay if there was a point to this and if Rapaport could act while stuttering
Another totally wasted character was Sunday’s wife played by Charlize Theron. I don’t understand why she is in everyone of these pointless secondary roles. She’s a good actress but what was purpose in this movie, why was here character in this film to beginning when her character certainly didn’t carry the movie forward.
DOWNSIDES
I definitely felt that I was watching two different movies. The first half shows Carl going through training in diving school, but from what they showed, all you have to do is assemble a pipe underwater to become a diver. It was this instance and several after that nothing in the movie was shown with consistency and detail or really fully explain.
And yet the first hour or so was spent just on the showing the training. You had all this time and the production can’t fully show how difficult it is to become a diver.
Another ludicrous part was involving Brashear and the submarine when he was looking for a nuclear warhead. A Russian sub just happens to pass right under a U.S navy ship and Brashear just happens to avoid the sub but they just completely forget the sub. There’s so many of these ridiculous sub-plots that happens too quickly and just become to aimless to watch.
UPSIDES
You always need everything working for you in making a great film, in this instance you can’t just have great actors but no story or something that has been done before. Unfortunately that’s what you have here but it’s Deniro and Cuba’s performance that makes this movie worth watching.
There’s really not much this has to offer besides there star actors. The diving aspect was interesting to watch but could have been more detailed and explored. There was really nothing original that was done in this movie
CONCLUSION
This movie is easily compared to a Rules of Engagement or a Perfect Storm or other many other movies that require there stars to carry the movie. This doesn’t really offer anything we haven’t seen before and the production is too lazy to try anything that’s not predictable. But there is a place everyone with flock to see these kinds of movies- your local video store