Men of Honor (2000) on Netflix
Carl Brashear leaves his Kentucky farm for the Navy, set on becoming its first Black diver. At the Bayonne diving school, Master Chief Billy Sunday is ordered to make sure he fails.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb7.2/10131,632 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes42%
Trailer
Plot summary
Carl Brashear is the son of Kentucky sharecroppers, and his father made him promise never to quit. In 1949 he enlists in the Navy and is assigned to the galley of the USS Hoist, where he watches Master Chief Billy Sunday go over the side without an air line to rescue a diver. Carl decides he wants to be the Navy's first Black diver and is sent to Diving and Salvage School in Bayonne, New Jersey. Sunday runs the course, and the camp's commanding officer, Mr. Pappy, tells him that Carl must not pass. A student named Dylan Rourke and the others refuse to share quarters with Carl, who left school in the seventh grade and has to catch up on the books.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Men of Honor (2000)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While the film portrays a Wisconsin recruit as the only white recruit to remain in Carl Brashear's bunk, the actual individual was a dark-skinned Brazilian diver named Alberto José do Nascimento, who also helped Brashear save a fellow recruit trapped underwater during a training exercise.
- The production used authentic Navy Mark V diving gear that was standard issue from 1915 to 1985, though the helmets were actually commercial models with larger viewing windows mounted on Navy breastplates so cameras could see the actors' faces better, and the full rigs weighed around 200 pounds.
- The film gives Robert De Niro's character the rank of Master Chief in the late 1940s, but that rank did not actually exist until Congress created it in 1958, so the real-life figure would only have held the lower rank of Chief Petty Officer at that point in the story.
- Men of Honor opened in only third place at the North American box office, behind Little Nicky and Charlie's Angels, which was in its second week at the top spot.
