The story of the USS Mason and its crew is well worth telling. So, the subject matter for this film was not the issue. My reason for giving it a mediocre score has a lot more to do with the final portion of the film--one that was handled in a sloppy and heavy-handed manner.
The film begins with an old man (Ossie Davis) sitting down with his grown grandson and his friends and talking about the old days. Soon, he begins talking about his experience as a crewman on the USS Mason--one of only two black-manned ships that saw action during WWII. He explained that back in the day, the armed forces were not integrated and black guys in the Navy could only serve as cooks or orderlies. However, someone had the idea of having ships manned with black crews--black crews that had an all-white officer corp in charge. It's funny, but this is the same way the film "Glory" went--but that was 80 years earlier--you would have hoped that times would have changed!
What follows is a prolonged flashback scene--with actors portraying the crew of the Mason. This is by far the best part of the film and showed their bravery as well as the crap they had to put up with due to race prejudice. Their story is inspiring and I wish more of the film was devoted to it.
The final portion of the film is set in the present--and shows the efforts of the old man and his grandson to get the US government to recognize the contributions of the Mason's crew. This was a nice epilogue BUT it was ruined, for me, by the silly characters and writing- -particularly the character of the son. His actions and dialog made no sense whatsoever and was embarrassingly badly handled. What had been an inspiring story was made trite due to the writing and acting here. It's a shame. Perhaps there is a documentary out there on the subject--as this semi-ficitonalized story just seemed very poorly written at times and the dialog made me cringe towards the end. The men of the Mason deserve a better tribute than this.
