In
Men of Honor Carl Brashear is depicted as a
quintessential American hero. Although the film is based on
a true story, director George Tillman, Jr., has not made a
biopic but rather has added dramatic flourishes to make an
exciting and heartwarming story. Born into poverty at Sonora,
Kentucky, we first see Brashear swimming at an early age by
diving deep into the local swimming hole. His loving African
American parents want him to finish school, but he stops at
the seventh grade to help his aging father (played by Carl
Lumbly), a dirt farmer, to avoid being evicted as a sharecropper.
In 1961, according to the film, Brashear (now played by Cuba
Gooding, Jr.) decides that his future is in the Navy, so he
enlists. When Carl says farewell to his family, promising
to return, his father tells him not to return but to do his
best. Assigned to the U.S.S. Hoist in the South Pacific, where
African Americans are only allowed to swim on certain days,
he works in the galley as mess steward. Frustrated that he
cannot use his swimming talent, Brashear decides one sweltering
day to show his prowess by jumping into the sea and swimming
toward a buoy, but he does so on Friday, a day reserved for
whites to swim (instead of Tuesday, reserved for minorities).
When he quickly proves that he is the best swimmer on board,
he is reassigned as Deck Seaman. Soon, he observes a deep
sea diver, Leslie "Billie" Sunday (played by Robert De Niro),
rescued from an underwater mishap during a salvage operation.
Sunday’s physicians inform him that due to a resulting embolism,
deep sea diving is contraindicated, so he is reassigned to
train deep sea divers in a base at Bayonne, New Jersey, in
1963. Brashear applies for the training, sending more than
one hundred requests, and is admitted as the first African
American ever to be trained as a deep sea diver. He graduates,
despite many obstacles, from his seventh grade education to
racial prejudice manifested in many forms and by most of those
on the base--excluding a fellow trainee, the stuttering Mr.
Snowhill (played by Michael Rapoport!). Sunday, who has become
an alcoholic, is so impressed by the herculean feats of Brashear
that he becomes his steadfast friend, standing by him during
later challenges, though initially he had shown redneck prejudice
due to the fact that he also had a sharecropper background.
After graduation, Brashear is assigned in due course to the
U.S.S. Hoist, where the mission is to retrieve a nuclear missile
that accidentally fell into the ocean off the coast of Spain
and to do so before Russian deep sea divers. Although successful
in the mission, he later has his leg nearly cut in half due
to an onboard accident. With a bum leg, he can no longer be
a deep sea diver, whereupon he requests amputation so that
he can resume his career. Physical therapy brings him up to
par, and in 1968 Brashear appears before a board of inquiry
to appeal a decision to deny his request to resume his career
as a deep sea diver. His request is granted in a dramatic
test involving a new and heavier diving suit (200 pounds)
that he must wear while walking twelve steps forward. In 1970,
he fulfills his ambition to reach the rank of Master Chief
Navy Diver, and in 1977 he retires from the Navy. Men
of Honor shows the depth of racial prejudice in the
Navy despite President Harry Truman’s executive order of 1948
to desegregate the armed forces. Carl Brashear’s refusal to
consider himself a victim and his preference to act honorably
stands out in the film as a tribute to one man’s determination;
we also gain respect for him as we view how he finds a girlfriend
Jo (played by Aunjanue Ellie) at a Bayonne public library
and becomes a proud husband and father. According to the film’s
tagline, "History is made by those who break rules." But one
of the rules broken by the movie is to date Brashear’s enlistment
as 1961, whereas he actually joined the Navy in 1948 on hearing
about Truman’s desegregation order. In addition, the film
offers a Pollyanna scenario for the solution of racial problems
in the United States that clearly accepts blacks in a subordinate
role until helped by white do-gooders. Nevertheless, Brashear
is one of only seven enlisted men now enshrined in the Naval
Archives; the story is based on an oral history transcribed
onto 164 pages. MH
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want to comment on this film
