Cove, The

 

Story:

This riveting documentary (winner of the Audience Award at Sundance) follows a group of animal activists to a scenic cove in Taijii, Japan, where they use surveillance equipment to capture footage of a secretive and heavily guarded operation run by the world's largest supplier of dolphins. As the daring group risks their lives to expose the horrifying truths behind the capture of dolphins for the lucrative tourist industry, they also uncover an environmental catastrophe (NetFlix).

Review:

The first time you see a trailer for Louie Psihoyos’ The Cove your reaction might be, “wait, what!?”  It’s rare to see a bunch of hippies go into special ops mode to fight for their cause, but that’s exactly what happens.  And though Psihoyos puts himself squarely into his film, his documentary manages to remain calm and even handed even as it relentlessly condemns the Japanese for its dolphin practice.    

Admittedly, by the end of this film, it’s hard not to despise the country for its practice. Psihoyos combines emotional and rational arguments from both activists and researchers to create a powerful attack against the practice while simultaneously developing a fascinating and suspenseful story.  That’s what makes The Cove a great film; it manages to be both an argument and a narrative at the same time.  Audiences looking to be entertained will fine a great story in the group’s attempts to capture the conceivably un-capturable while audiences simultaneously look to understand the complex and sharply divided debate over dolphin killing.  In other words Psihoyos managed to combine debate team with James Bond (errr, minus the gun battles).    

There are some cheesy or cliché moments (the surfer girl crying, standing on a corner in Tokyo with a TV airing the dolphin killings, etc), but these moments are few and far between and are couched in a filmmaker’s earnest desire to fight for something he believes in.  And to his credit, The Cove is one of the few activists films I’ve seen in recent years to make me not only reevaluate my opinions but also want to answer the call to action.    

And in the midst of all this, he’s creating a truly entertaining film.  Even if you are the most selfish, slothful person in the world, The Cove is a film for you.  It has everything you could ever want in an entertaining movie: clear and defined villains, heroes who stumble into the heart of the battle, awesome techno gadgets, high levels of suspense and tons of footage of swimming dolphins (admit it, you could watch dolphins swim for hours).    

Now it’s easy to gush about Psihoyos’ documentary for another three or four paragraphs, but all that would do is waste more of your time that could be spent taking in his film.  The Cove isn’t the best documentary ever made but Psihoyos sets a new precedent for documentary films that can both argue and entertain.  In many ways, he could very well be the next evolution in activist documentary filmmaking, the quality, care and attention to detail is just that good.

Extra Sources for further research:

http://www.takepart.com/thecove

Reviewed by Matthew Abshire for Documentary Film Online on February 12, 2010

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