Over the past couple of years, I've read articles, snippets, and other reviews about The Cove. It won for Best Documentary at the Oscars in 2009. I heard so many good things, I finally bumped it to the top, and had to check it out.
While this is a documentary, it really doesn't come across as one. Many people think documentary = boring. Not true. Especially not here. This movie is a Flipper/Bourne Identity piece of work, focusing on the entrapment and sale of dolphins for marine water parks throughout the world (Sea World, Swimming with Dolphins programs, etc...).
The majority of The Cove is filmed in a very small town in Japan, and centers around Ric O'Barry, the creator of the television series Flipper. As O'Barry says in the movie, "I spent 10 years building up this business and now I've spent the last 30 years trying to tear it down".
O'Barry and his crew are not welcome in the area due to their opposing views of the fishermen, and every effort is put forth by the Japanese harbor men, police and government to move the crew out and disallow them from filming the goings-on in any way.
The under-the-cover-of-darkness, night-vision-goggle, mission-impossible trek that O'Barry and his team embark to plant underwater cameras, mountain cameras and sound devices is the best part of the movie. They're chased by cops, hide behind trees, run into vans to escape security...all in the name of getting some footage of what goes on at The Cove.
The dirty secret of course isn't that the dolphins are captured and sold - but rather that the dolphins not sold or wanted, are corralled into a separate part of the cove, and killed. Mercilessly. Graphically. Yes, it's horrific.
The film does an excellent job showing us the secrecy of the Japanese surrounding the operation, and the final reveal of what they're doing with the dolphins that aren't sold, and the impending massacre, is a worth while payoff for the viewer.
I couldn't help but think of comedian Denis Leary's take that, "we only care about the cute animals - oh look, a dolphin, you're so cute! What are you? I'm a cow. Get in the truck! You're a baseball glove!". Coarse? Sure, of course it is. But that's what makes it true. Cows, chickens, pigs are slaughtered everyday in what are surely horrible manners as well. Dolphins are cute - nobody wants to see a cute dolphin slaughtered.
This still doesn't take away from the impact of the movie. It's moving, it's touching. It's a very well made documentary that will have you disappointed in mankind, and angry that this sort of thing is allowed to go on on the other side of the world, and nobody even knows about it.........
4 out of 5 stars.
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