Review of Men Of Honour

Introduction

Carl Brashear (Cuba Gooing Jr)is a young black man in fifties America who is leaves his humble upbringing to join the Navy and make something of himself. After seeing Billy Sunday (Robert De Niro) put his life on the line as a deep-sea diver Carl sees the career path he wants to follow. There has never been a black trainee in the American Navy`s diving program and he is determined not only to be the first but also to rise to the highest rank of Master Diver.

Based on a true story `Men of Honour` tells the story of Carl Brashear`s fight to overcome the racism present in fifties America, the prejudice of the diving instructor (Robert De Niro) and personal tragedy in his struggle to achieve his goal.

Video

The presentation on this disc is of the highest quality. The picture is sharp and clear at all times without ever seeming over processed. The colours are extremely rich and natural looking throughout along with high detail levels in areas of darkness.

Reference quality? I`d have to say yes.

Audio

The audio presentation is also outstanding with a rich involving soundstage. The surround channels are used to extremely good effect throughout the movie. Not only are they used to create immersive underwater experiences but also to add to the general ambience of each scene with some well placed discreet sounds. The front of the soundstage is very broad and combines perfectly with the rears to create an excellent example of Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.

Features

The features on this disc start off with an audio commentary by Cuba Gooding Jr., George Tillman (Director), Scott Marshall Smith (Writer) and Robert Teitel (Producer). This is an interesting commentary track and is worth listening to providing you don`t have the same problem distinguishing the voices of Cuba Gooding Jr and the Director, George Tillman, that I had.

Then we have a 14 minute HBO featurette, a 6 minute mini-documentary about Carl Brashear, animatics with Director`s commentary, music video (Brian McKnight - "Win"), a trailer and 2 TV spots.

My favourite were the deleted scenes. There are 12 included on the disc and each one comes with an optional commentary track by the Director. Hearing why each scene was chopped is interesting and these scenes do actually add something to the movie itself.

I always enjoy this level of involvement from the Director and this set of extras shows some real thought and extra effort.

Conclusion

It`s hard to watch a film of a true story like this and not feel moved and inspired in some way. It`s such a fascinating tale and I`m glad to say that this film does it justice.

The film hinges on the performance of Robert De Niro and Cuba Gooding Jr and both excel. Cuba Gooding Jr is the real star of the movie as his portrayal of Carl Brashear is not only believable but moving. We`ve come to expect acting of the highest quality from Robert De Niro and once again he doesn`t disappoint. Whilst this story belongs to Cuba Gooding Jr`s character there is an interesting backplot involving De Niro that sets off very well against the main plot.

My only slight criticism would be that they didn`t make a large enough issue of the racism. A lot is left to your own imagination and whilst this does work you can`t help but feel that it would have been more of an emotional experience had the racism issue been brought more to the fore.

This minor quibble aside doesn`t detract from what is an excellent film which has been given a top class DVD release to match. Highly recommended.