USS Indianapolis

I don't need to repeat the comments from other one-star (fair) reviews of this piece of junk designed to get quick bucks on opening weekend from moviegoers before word-of-mouth sunk this faster than the USS Indianapolis. Just to illustrate how little the producers, writer and director cared about this movie, they sank a vintage PBY Catalina during filming, and then hired a salvage company that would make the three stooges look like atomic scientists to recover it from the beach where it sank in shallow water.

Three stooges salvage company broke the rare airplane apart while trying to winch it onto a barge. It was destroyed forever.

Obviously, the salvage company had zero clue about the lift points and structural members of the aircraft ... which is about the same as the zero clue that producers had about the historical accuracy of this movie.

Just to illustrate my point, while the vintage PBY Catalina was sitting nose-down in the surf, producers made the decision to knock off a couple of quick scenes on board it while the airplane was sitting there being destroyed in the ocean. (See if you can spot that scene where they filmed footage in the bow of a partially-sunken Catalina.)

This disrespect towards an irreplaceable and invaluable piece of history is matched only by the disrespect they paid to the actual crew of the USS Indianapolis.

Set in mid-1945 during World War II, the USS Indianapolis, led by Captain Charles McVay (Nicolas Cage), was secretly tasked to deliver parts of an atomic bomb (which would later be dropped on Hiroshima) unescorted to a naval base in the Pacific. Back in open sea after successfully delivering their cargo, the ship was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine in the Philippine Sea. The sailors spent five gruelling days with minimal supplies floating on life rafts in shark-infested waters. Only 317 of the original 1,196 crew members survive the ordeal.

The first hour of the film was quite brisk and eventful. The main storyline was laid out within the first scene. The backstory about some of the young sailors were introduced, oddly not too much on McVay himself. The USS Indianapolis embarked on its mission, torpedoed and sunk all within that first hour. However, this meant that the entire second hour would only be dealing about the survival ordeal of the sailors among the sharks awaiting rescue. It got maudlin and repetitive after the first few shark attacks. This was definitely not the war action film people were expecting to see.

The actors all seem to have come from the Nicolas Cage school of hammy acting. The major side story was about two friends who were in love with the same girl back home. Another side story was about a couple of sailors, one white, one black, constantly at odds with each other. There was also another side story about an arrogant young officer and his despicable attitude. All these rehashed side stories just served to fill out the rest of the running time before and after the sinking. The best actor for me would have to be Yutaka Takeuchi, the Japanese actor playing court-martial witness Commander Hashimoto, who displayed dignified subtly in his brief role.

For its Philippine release, this film's subtitle "Men of Courage" was replaced with "Disaster at (sic) Philippine Sea." However, for Filipino moviegoers expecting to actually see some part of the Philippines or see Filipinos in action in this film, they will be disappointed. The Philippines was mentioned but was never actually shown except for scene labels to establish the location. There was an extra card interrupting the closing credits stating how the search for the wreck of the Indianapolis was undertaken in 2001 in cooperation with the Philippine government and National Geographic. That was all about the Philippines here, nothing more. 5/10.

The movie just doesn't do service to the real events. If you're really interested in the story just read the Wikipedia page. You'll learn more about the events and it'll save you from wasting 2 hours and ten minutes of your life to this awful movie.

I always expect that Hollywood will bungle the details in military movies and usually give them a pass for those. There are SOOO many anachronisms and inaccuracies in this movie though. EVERY scene has something wrong with it. The ship itself, the uniforms, the orders given, the weapons, the lingo, even the sharks. It's beyond distracting. The most glaring example is that they the used a battleship to represent a cruiser. You can have a movie like U-571, which is fictional, and they have more accurate depictions of the submarines and even a German destroyer. Mario Van Peebles is like "hey, the USS Alabama is located in Mobile, let's go film on that." "It's the wrong type of ship though." "It's only a film based on true events, accuracy doesn't matter."

On top of that the writers couldn't have stuffed more cliché, trite military lingo into this movie if they tried. The focus they have on the sharks is weird, and inaccurate. The captains speech made me groan out load. Nicholas cage don't ever do another war movie again! If you've seen Windtalkers you know what I'm talking about. Again, if you really want to know what happened to the USS Indianapolis, take 10 mins and read the Wikipedia or better yet go to the library and find a book about it.

Well, I don't think this movie was quite as bad as some reviewers are making it. I do agree that the direction left something to be desired. Some of the early part of the film was a little sloppy. There were short scenes that seemed to come out of nowhere, and didn't seem to have anything to do with the flow of what we were seeing. As a former military man, I was astonished to see a scene where Nicolas Cage wore a mis-matched khaki naval uniform. Never happen, folks. However, I thought the movie got a little better as it went along. I was very disappointed that race had to be inserted into this. There didn't seem to be any reason why race had to play ANY part in this story. I don't know why so many directors (& producers and writers) seem to feel the need to do this (well, I have my suspicions, but that's a story for another day). The scene of the cook spitting on an officers piece of pie was despicable, and I wondered why that was even included in this. It served absolutely no real purpose. This was, supposedly, a crack naval ship and crew, entrusted with a top secret mission, and a sailor is spitting on an officer's food? But the survival scenes were done fairly well, and it was clear the incredible suffering & tragedy these men were exposed to. I thought the movie started rather poorly, but improved as it went along. I think, perhaps, Van Peebles is lacking in experience, and bit off a bit more than he could chew, but, all in all, I thought it was a decent enough movie. Cage played a fairly stoic, controlled character, but I think that was a good choice on his part. The story was what needed attention, not some overblown character. He seemed to hit the right note as a Naval Ship Captain. The actors all did adequate jobs, and it wasn't exactly a terrible movie.

The true story of the Indianapolis is a compelling one of bravery, intrigue, unimaginable suffering and governmental cowardice. This movie never comes close to conveying any of that. It rushes through the set-up, never pausing for us to get to know any of the principals in any depth. The movie can't wait to get to the sharks, but when it does, it almost turns into a comedy of unconvincing action, gaps in logic, ridiculous dialogue and clumsy CGI. Poor Nic Cage is reduced to a near catatonic state, forced into unnatural situations and dubious decisions. In Jaws, Spielberg did a better job in five minutes with Quint's recounting of his Indianapolis experience than this movie does in two hours. A fiasco. McHale's Navy was more realistic.