The Caine Mutiny (1954)
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The Caine Mutiny Movie Review
The Caine Mutiny is a 1954 courtroom drama film directed by Edward Dmytryk and starring Humphrey Bogart. It’s a film that had a lot of great potential, but still ended up being only solid.
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“Well, he’s certainly Navy.
Yeah, so was Captain Bligh“
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When a U.S. Naval captain shows signs of mental instability that jeopardizes the ship, the first officer relieves him of command and faces court martial for mutiny. That is the premise behind this movie that unfortunately chose to focus also on other less significant subplots, thus seriously blunting the impact of this otherwise very strong story.
In particular, the romantic subplot was quite uninteresting and really unnecessary at the end of the day. I do realize that they probably wanted to include female characters into this male-oriented movie, but that backfired as the character was underdeveloped and the whole subplot was undercooked. Sometimes some movies are only meant to have men in them and this is such an example for sure.
I also did not care for the first half all that much. It was a fine setup for the real meat and crux of the story to later unfold, but it took too much time to get there, and some scenes were so patriotic in the worst way possible. I get that the movie happens on a navy ship, but still the American patriotism was unbearable in some scenes. The worst offender is that score, which is definitely fun and memorable, but overplayed and cheesy at the end of the day.
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But getting back to that meat of the story, I really liked it and I appreciated the complexities at the center of it. The movie explores so well what it must be like when the captain of a ship is to be relieved of command with many mixed emotions at display here at full capacity. On the one hand, you’ve got the feeling of betrayal, but on the other hand, the feeling of justice. The courtroom drama scenes here are so amazing and thematically complex that it’s a shame the whole movie wasn’t like that, but only the second half was the true classic courtroom drama.
As for the actors, clearly the highlight was Oscar-nominated Humphrey Bogart in what has to be one of his finest performances, which says a lot in a career full of great roles, but he played stupendously the mentally unstable Queeg. He easily steals the show from everyone else in a true testament of his iconic screen presence.
Others are much less memorable with some even being mediocre as most have already pinpointed the weak turn from Robert Francis. Fred McMurray is the only great actor of the rest of the bunch and he delivered a usually great performance. As for the technicalities, the cinematography is very good and the ship is well utilized as a setting, but still even more could have been done with it as the movie isn’t as epic as it thinks it is, but more intimate in its central drama. Despite its flaws, The Caine Mutiny did deserve most of its Oscar nominations, especially the technical ones and the Best Actor one of course.
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