Men of Honor

George Tillman Jr. splits Carl Brashear’s story into two separate fights: the colour bar at the diving school first, then the campaign to return after he loses a leg. The second half rests on fact. In 1966, recovering a nuclear weapon lost off Palomares, a parted cable swung a pipe into Brashear; his lower left leg was amputated, and in 1968 he became the first amputee recertified as a United States Navy diver. The man opposing him is invented. Billy Sunday, played by Robert De Niro, is a fictional creation traced back to a petty officer named Harry M. Rutherford. That is the governing choice of the film: institutional prejudice is gathered into one face, and you watch a duel instead of a history. The same liberty shows in rank: Sunday carries the Navy’s highest enlisted grade early on, although that grade did not exist until 1958. For the underwater work, 20th Century Fox brought in Seattle’s Divers Institute of Technology, where Cuba Gooding Jr. and De Niro trained with staff in the summer of 1999; shooting took place in Oregon. A good fit if you want to see what walking the sea floor in heavy Mark V gear involves. Not for anyone who needs the obstacle in front of Brashear to stay institutional rather than shrink to one antagonist.