The Cove | Documentary | rated PG-13 (animal cruelty) | starring Richard O’Barry, Paul Watson | 1:32 mins
Richard O’Barry, who at the time of his work on Flipper was the world’s most famous dolphin trainer, has spent the last 40 years trying to stop Japanese poaching of the animal. Once caught, the Japanese either sell the animals for show or kill them for food; all of it done inside a cove that’s geographical location has made it a maximum security fort keeping animal rights activists from exposing it to the world.
The Cove is an uncommonly entertaining Save the Dolphins message movie. It’s a call to action to rid the world of dolphin slaughter, but doesn’t fall into the trap that most environmentalist message movies do: blaming the audience. Instead of lecturing us about how evil we humans are Cove tells a very specific story about very specific people in a way that’s theme reverberates back at all of us. This we can get behind. Starting with the life story of Richard O’Barry, it follows O’Barry from dolphin trainer to the moment he realized these animals were self-aware and miserable in their tanks to a horrifying account of the dolphin who played Flipper’s suicide. O’Barry feels responsible for dolphin hunting for his involvement with the show and has become a pariah in the Sea World community for his actions. Apparently in Japan you can go to a water park, watch the dolphins perform and eat one too.
Cameras follow O’Barry encountering his usual blockades in Japan (such as a man he calls “Private Space” because that is all he can say to keep O’Barry out). It’s absurd to the point of humorous how he is tailed by agents of the dolphin poachers or thrown out of hotels. But the movie really kicks into high gear when O’Barry hires Hollywood special effects technicians and a rag-tag Ocean’s 11 -type group to infiltrate the Cove and plant high-def cameras and expose the dolphin slaughter to the world.
Director Louie Psihoyos assembles all of this footage masterfully. Interviews provide the set-up and night-vision cameras the pay-off, with Psihoyos putting it together like an espionage movie. Much of the nature footage is beautiful. The entertainment value of The Cove is exactly why it will also be a superior message movie. On top of it the movie isn’t just a call to arms, it’s existence itself is a success. A blow to the secrecy of dolphin poachers. Once we get a look inside the cove, it’s a blood-soaked stunner that will probably stop you dead in your tracks.
A great documentary that gets you right in the middle of the action and a proactive, razor sharp weapon for the cause it supports. The Cove is captivating, entertaining and absolutely riveting – words I’d never thought I’d say about an environmentalist message movie.