Chinese Name: Nu Hai Qian Jiang
English Name: Men Of Honor
Date: September 14, 2000
Director: George Tillman Jr.
Cast: Robert De Niro
Charlize Theron
Cuba Gooding Jr.
Powers Boothe
Hal Holbrook
David Keith
Michael Rapaport
Robert Blanche
Region: United States
Language: English
Region: United States (Filming Location)
Duration: 129 Minutes
Plot Summary:
Carl Brashear was born into a poor black sharecropper family. As a young man, he was deeply attracted to the U.S. Navy and enlisted to serve in the military. Upon entering the barracks, he discovered that the Navy was not as ideal as he had imagined—racial discrimination loomed everywhere, even excluding blacks from serving as ship crew members. Despite the harsh realities, Carl Brashear did not abandon his dreams. He aspired to become an extraordinary person. After meeting Bill Sunday (played by Robert De Niro), this young black man became passionately obsessed with becoming a diver involved in rescue operations.
Carl Brashear spent almost two years lobbying and striving for the opportunity to participate in the Navy's diving training program. The instructor he encountered was none other than Sunday. Sunday was a stubborn individual who tried hard to persuade Brashear to quit a field that no black person had ever joined. However, Brashear persevered tenaciously, breaking the white monopoly on diving fields, crossing the strict racial boundaries within the Navy, and entering the elite deep-sea diving and rescue team of the U.S. Navy.
Meanwhile, Sunday's life became tumultuous due to his own rebellious nature and excessive drinking habits, leading to escalating marital conflicts with Gwen (played by Charlize Theron). Nevertheless, Brashear faced a formidable opponent in Billy Sunday, an outstanding diving officer who was difficult to handle. After several confrontations, these two professional rivals formed an unbreakable bond. In 1966, during an emergency involving a deep-sea nuclear warhead, Brashear unfortunately lost half of his foot. At this time, Billy Sunday fully supported Brashear in overcoming immense pain, helping him bravely challenge racial discrimination and bureaucratic practices within the military, together writing a glorious chapter in the history of diving and rescue operations for the U.S. Navy.