Why are two talented actors who should know better starring in a rehash, made-for-TV-plotted film that manages to wallow in cliches and stale scenes from the onset until its thoroughly predictable, melodramatic end?
Men of Honor takes the underdog-denied-a-chance-for-greatness-due-to racism-classism-or-other-ism theme and tries to make it seem fresh by incorporating this contrived and overused device in a Navy diving setting. Cuba Gooding stars as a Navy recruit who can't get a chance cause he's black and goes up against the harsh, callus Robert DeNiro who attempts to stop Gooding from realizing his dream.
Cuba Gooding Jr. and Robert DeNiro should have known better than to star in such an eye-rolling premise that offers no suspense or unpredictably. Will Cuba triumph over evil? Will DeNiro follow the advice of a bigot general in charge? Will Charlize Theron ever stop drinking? Will Cuba's love interest find herself making him choose between his career and life? Will anyone care?
One day Hollywood will attempt to combine all the lackluster and overworked ideas and themes so horribly that it might make an action movie that involves a serial killer trying to reach his dream of killing more people than ever and thereby being the best but being held down by and then coached and trained by a hard-ass retired cop who ends up being a softy. Until then, the closest we have is Men Of Honor, a contrived, feel-good exercise in unoriginality and hack work. The film's only attribute is that it wasn't put through MTV-editing.
3 out of 10
Men of Honor takes the underdog-denied-a-chance-for-greatness-due-to racism-classism-or-other-ism theme and tries to make it seem fresh by incorporating this contrived and overused device in a Navy diving setting. Cuba Gooding stars as a Navy recruit who can't get a chance cause he's black and goes up against the harsh, callus Robert DeNiro who attempts to stop Gooding from realizing his dream.
Cuba Gooding Jr. and Robert DeNiro should have known better than to star in such an eye-rolling premise that offers no suspense or unpredictably. Will Cuba triumph over evil? Will DeNiro follow the advice of a bigot general in charge? Will Charlize Theron ever stop drinking? Will Cuba's love interest find herself making him choose between his career and life? Will anyone care?
One day Hollywood will attempt to combine all the lackluster and overworked ideas and themes so horribly that it might make an action movie that involves a serial killer trying to reach his dream of killing more people than ever and thereby being the best but being held down by and then coached and trained by a hard-ass retired cop who ends up being a softy. Until then, the closest we have is Men Of Honor, a contrived, feel-good exercise in unoriginality and hack work. The film's only attribute is that it wasn't put through MTV-editing.
3 out of 10