Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.0

USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage Blu-ray Movie Review

They're going to need a bigger boat.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 20, 2017

Maybe it was just the inevitable passage of time, one which removed us from the visceral memories of World War II, which saw cinematic epics and even television series depicting this epochal struggle become less and less effective as the forties, fifties and sixties gave way to the seventies and beyond. Baby Boomers who grew up in the wake of World War II had their own parents or grandparents to regale them with stories of the battles (if, that is, they could get those members of The Greatest Generation to talk about the war, which many times proved to be a challenge), but Hollywood also cranked out regular treatments of various war related tales, with several all time classics offering moving portrayals of everything from soldiers returning home from the war (The Best Years of Our Lives) to bittersweet ruminations on what exactly it means to be a hero under traumatic circumstances (Twelve O'Clock High, The Bridge on the River Kwai). While television started offering “battle of the week” episodic series like Combat! or indeed the small screen version of Twelve O’Clock High, big screen treatments of the war started to experience a noticeable decline in quality and popularity, though of course there were notable exceptions like The Guns of Navarone and The Dirty Dozen. It’s perhaps instructive to note that the sixties started offering comedic takes on the war, as if time had finally provided enough distance that we could collectively laugh about the trauma, including everything from Father Goose to Hogan's Heroes. But despite several attempts to reinvigorate the war film in the early seventies, attempts that included such disparate entries as Tora! Tora! Tora! and Catch-22, a certain lethargy had set in to many of these entries, and many of them failed to really ignite with the ticket buying populace. (A notable exception during this time period was Patton, one of the last "old school" feeling war epics, despite its post- modern emphasis on psychology.) By the time films like Midway and MacArthur came along later in the decade, it often seemed like studios were cranking out glorified made for television movies in the hopes of raking in a box office bonanza (it seldom turned out that way). While there were certainly well done films about the war that appeared in the intervening years, it was of course Saving Private Ryan that seemed to revitalize the genre, though enough time has passed since that epic that we may in fact be back into a new if not exactly improved version of what was happening in the seventies, when filmmakers didn’t quite know how to approach stories about World War II. USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage is a well meaning affair with a killer (literally and figuratively) concept, but it flounders repeatedly and never really builds up requisite emotional content despite an inherently tragic story that features both bravery and in at least one potent example a certain tragic resignation.

The story of the USS Indianapolis would seem to be tailor made for a big screen treatment. It features a tangential link to the atom bomb, it has a horrific torpedo attack leading to the sinking of the ship, and (most importantly) it has sharks. Lots of them. But in what I would term a bit of “Pearl Harbor syndrome,” USS Indianpolis: Men of Courage’s screenplay pads things interminably (albeit not as interminably as Michael Bay’s opus), offering romantic sidebars (one rather similar to Pearl Harbor, in fact) and a bunch of prepartory material that seems to serve no other purpose than to fill the film’s first hour or so. Nicolas Cage is on hand as real life Captain Charles Butler McVay, but the film also wants to introduce a number of supporting characters who, if not completely fictionalized, seem to be there as types rather than living, breathing human beings.

One of the things that always bothered me about entries like Midway is how obvious it was that virtually the entire film was a studio bound enterprise, with little feeling of what life is actually like on a warship. Some of that same tendency attends USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage, albeit within the context of the CGI era. While the tank work is quite convincing at times, once the “disaster film” aspect starts to unfold once the ship is sunk and numerous survivors are spread out in shark infested waters, things just look cheesy and almost humorous at times.

The film tries to exploit some visceral emotion in its coda, which concerns the travails which afflicted McVay after the tragedy. It’s an interesting kind of left turn from where the film has been previously, but director Mario Van Peebles, already kind of an odd choice to helm a film like this, doesn’t seem to know how to go for the jugular, or at least the heartstrings. The film therefore ends up sinking much like its titular ship.

Note: My colleague Brian Orndorf evidently liked USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage even less than I did. You can read Brian’s thoughts here.

USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. As seems to be the case more and more lately, the IMDb doesn't offer any technical data on the shoot, but a site devoted to cinematographers has a page on this film's DP Andrzej Sekula where it's stated an unspecified HD camera was utilized. When some kind of silly looking CGI isn't employed, quite a bit of USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage looks nicely sharp and often very well detailed. Elements from facial pores to uniform fabrics to (later) some gruesome wounds are offered with precision and good fine detail, especially in close-ups. The water set scenes start to have more of a green screen ambience, with kind of soft looking backgrounds, and some of the shark attacks are not especially convincing. The palette looks natural, and shadow detail is decent in many of the nighttime or dimly lit sequences.

USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that has a few nicely explosive moments that feature good LFE, but which achieves most of its immersion (no pun intended, considering the watery ambience of much of the second half of the film) due to omnipresent ambient environmental sounds. There's good discrete channelization of effects which help to recreate the claustrophobic and echoing sounds within the bowels of the ship, but the track really opens up once the sailors are all stranded out in the open waters. Dialogue is cleanly rendered and well prioritized on this problem free track.

USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Making of USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage (1080p; 33:11) is an above average EPK with some decent interviews and good behind the scenes footage (including some kind of funny shots of the rubber sharks they utilized).

USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage is based on a fascinating and tragic real life story, but it wastes so much time getting to the torpedo attack and later carnage that energy levels are already severely depleted. Performances are generally fine if not exactly inspired, but the film simply can't rise above what looks to have been a miniscule budget and some rote writing. Technical merits are generally strong for those considering a purchase.