Men of Honor DVD: Review By samtertainment

Based on the true story behind the first African American Navy Master Diver, Carl Brashear, and his struggle against not only racism, but also fate (he lost a leg during a recovery mission in the Mediterranean Sea).I will not get into details this time because this kind of based-on-a-true-story movies are better seen when you have only the faintest idea of what the hero went through.

The Good - First of all, the acting. Cuba Gooding Jr. and Robert DeNiro gave Oscar-worthy performances as Carl Brashear and Billy Sunday, respectively. Now, I may be wrong, but neither of them received Oscar consideration as far as I know. Why? Lord knows, but not only could they have been nominated, they could've also won. The same goes for George Tillman's directing; although it wasn't as impressive it was good enough for at least some Oscar consideration (specially after Peter Jackson somehow got a nomination for The Fellowship of the Ring). Anyway, back to the great acting, the performances of the two stars alone makes watching this film worthy.

Mark Isham's score, though not memorable, is another one of Men of Honor's strong points. It's one of those scores where you really don't remember the music, only that it was good and fitted the movie well. The high point of the score (and of the film) was the "twelve steps".

Finally, the story itself. Remember that this is based on true events, but not all things depicted in the movie happened in the way they appear onscreen. For example, Master Chief Billy Sunday (DeNiro) is kind of a hybrid between two key characters in Brashear's life. The name of Billy Sunday is based on a Chicago preacher. However, this is one of those instances when fact is more impressive than fiction, and some real events of Brashear's life were omitted because they were too bizarre to sound true! Also, the movie is divided into two acts, and each act can work as a separate movie. In both acts you have worthy climaxes, and that's something you don't see in most movies. What's even better, this is the kind of movie where you expect racism and the hero's struggles against it to be the main topic; this is not the case here. Yes, racism is an important part of the movie (specially in the first act), but Men of Honor does not revolve around it, and the film's voice isn't neccesarily a cry for justice and equality. Brashear does fight racism, but he fights other obstacles as well, making this a universal heroic story.

The Bad - This movie may not be a classic, but I can't find faults big enough in it to discuss them here.

Commentary by George Tillman Jr., Cuba Gooding Jr., Robert Teitel, and Scott Marshall Smith - It's a very nice commentary, with insights on the production of the film as well as some funny anecdotes and data (for example, after Carl Brashear cut his leg in real life on the Mediterranean recovery mission, he went through lots of hardships just to get to the hospital more than a day later, including and ending with being declared dead by the doctors! This chain of events was so bizarre and cartoonish Tillman elected not to include them on the film because people wouldn't believe it). The atmosphere was one of informality, which is good because you feel like you are watching the film with your friends; Cuba laughed for at least 20% of the commentary(ok, so I may be exagerating a bit). The problem with this is that sometimes everyone decided to talk at once and you couldn't make what they were saying, and this was specially annoying when you wanted to hear what one of them was saying. Commentary subtitles (like on the Shrek DVD) would have helped the cause in these instances.

Deleted Scenes including Alternate Ending - Similar to the Gladiator DVD, the deleted scenes can be viewed with or without commentary by the director; however, unlike the aforementioned DVD none of the deleted scenes were interesting, and you could see why they were deleted. The Alternate Ending is nothing to be impressed about, and it was a very wise decision to leave the ending as it is (it wasn't really an alternate ending but a continuation of the present one). For those who want to know...nah, watch it on the DVD.

HBO "First Look" featurette - Standard "making of" feature, perhaps a bit too short. I find the audio commentary to be much more instructive and fun than this feature.

Master Chief: A tribute to Carl Brashear doc*mentary - Even shorter than the "making of" feature, although it actually tells you more about Carl Brashear than the HBO doc*mentary.

Brian McKnight's "Win" music video - Nice.

Animated storyboards - "Narrated" by George Tillman, this is a look at the submarine sequence in animated storyboard fashion.

Trailers & TV Spots

This is a great film. It may not be the most original of the genre, but it's a great watch. The ending - the "twelve steps" - really puts you on the edge of your seat, at least of the first viewing. So, whether you are African American, caucasian, chinese, hispanic, martian, whatever, this is a movie for everyone.