Ah, that moment in a sailor’s life when he has to change his preferred peer address from “matey” to “chum.” Remember that time we wanted to make an historical WWII naval film and ended up making embarrassing rip-offs of Jaws and A Few Good Men? Actually, USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage doesn’t much resemble A Few Good Men, but the mere fact that this war biography spent the last act in a courtroom should tell you what a jumbled mess this film became … if, perhaps, you couldn’t tell by the full hour spent on life rafts.
On the one hand, you gotta love a filmmaker who relentlessly studied In the Heart of Sea, Life of Pi, and Unbroken and decided, “you know what those films needed more of? Floating adrift in the ocean.” Clearly the key to quality cinema is scene after scene after scene of guys sitting on life rafts. Yeah, let’s have Mario Van Peebles direct Titanic; then we can spend hours four, five and six watching Jack drown.
Let me back up. It is the summer of 1945 and the USS Indianapolis has been charged with the duty of delivering the atomic bombs a reasonable bomber-range distance from Japan. The navy deliberately refused an escort to downplay the nature of the mission to foreign eyes. After completing the mission without incident, the USS Indianapolis wandered out to sea again and was sunk by a Japanese submarine without even firing back. To cover the fact that war happened with a minimum of retaliation or heroics, two plot lines were introduced: one involved a racially charged swabby rivalry and the other was two white guys falling in love with the same woman. On the latter, I couldn’t tell you which white guy was which. Lord forgive me, but when you put ‘em in identical uniforms, they really do all look alike to me.
Don’t worry, Captain Nicolas Cage is in charge. Cage played it subdued again for this role – is there an inverse correlation in the Cage match world between importance of position and effort he puts into the role? I can but imagine his personal thought process, “hmmm … lessee: Congressman, post rapture ‘survivor’, Captain who delivers the a-bomb? Yeah those are all phone-ins. Oh, here’s a role! I’m a slimeball drifter worth about 36 cents – ok, baby, it’s Cage time!” This film ended up
being all about Captain McVay’s leadership on the sea, but there’s no way I’m going to remember a single moment of Cage’s performance past this review.
At the age of what must be 84, Tom Sizemore is probably now a bit too old to participate actively in WWII; I’m sure he still holds the rank of “sergeant” or the naval equivalent thereof because that is clearly the role he is born to play forever and ever.
USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage might have lacked the fury, tactics, and inhumanity we’ve come to expect from war films, but it didn’t cheat us on sharks. There were plenty of those and a ton of B-roll. Realistic or no, there is no shortage of swabbie snacktime in this film.
♪I’m floating away set way out adrift in emergency
I’ve got to be free to avoid another kamikaze
On board, I was captain and now I’m tossed
I’ll search for remainders of the crew I lost
And I’ll try Lord yes I’ll try to phone it in
I look to see dorsal fins of the gray sharks in the sea
Some hungry some bad
I think they ate my friends and the swag they had
We may float starving forever in these hunger throes
It’s better than “death by incisored foes”
And we’ll act ‘til film’s in the can to carry on
A gathering of critics appeared at column’s head
They rated my performance and this is what they said
They said just float away just float away
Just float away
Just float away
Just float FYNC
Just float away
Just float away
Just float FYNC♫
Rated R, 128 Minutes
D: Mario Van Peebles
W: Cam Cannon, Richard Rionda Del Castro
Genre: History!
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: USS Indianapolis survivors and the families
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Sharks
♪ Parody inspired by “Come Sail Away”
