Watched the film (On Demand) USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage (subtitle unnecessary) which is the true story of the Indianapolis, which delivered the Hiroshima bomb to the staging island before returning to the US, getting torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese sub… the mission was secret so no one knew they went down and where… so the hundreds of men died via exposure, drowning, and (most famously) shark attack. It’s an important story that deserves better… if not a better film then a better budget and probably a longer filming schedule.
Because this is a well-intentioned film sabotaged by shockingly inept special effects and a kind of made-for-tv vibe in the first hour (before the sinking). The film covers some of the stories of the crew and the captain (played by a subdued Nicolas Cage) before the mission, the mission, the sinking, the survivors getting eaten by sharks, their rescue, their return to the mainland, and then the court-martial of the captain. I was not surprised by the first action was but surprised – and pleased – the story’s final 1 hr 15 min wasn’t just men getting eaten by sharks like the 18th SyFy Channel shark attack movie of the year.
The sharks in this movie are generally pretty well photographed – it looks like they may have had live sharks in the tank with the actors. Though when the sharks attacked, it was SyFy Channel levels of effects (happily very quick, unlike some of the terrible airplane and uboat effects). But still the best version of this part of the story was in Jaws.
I’d write the whole movie off as inept but the final fifteen or twenty minutes was so earnest and clearly devoted to the memory of the survivors. I wish the film had been able to scrape up a better budget… it was directed by Mario Van Peebles who I think could have done a better job with more time and resources.
So, yeah, as noted caught this On Demand and I doubt it got a theatrical release but maybe with Nicolas Cage and Tom Sizemore they wrangled out some kind of release. It feels like a direct to video kind of production though and I can’t recommend it.
I can’t speak for how accurate it was though it gets the basics right. But I doubt their budget was such that they could be much more accurate than that (as a depiction of WW2). Plus there’s some cheesy soap opera stuff going on with the crew’s backstories that really could have used some punch-ups.
I only recommend it to people really interested in the story or WW2 completionist fans who will probably be turned off by it anyway.
Score: 69