The Cove – DVD Review

The Film:

I remember a while back when I was talking to my older friend about what Michael Vick did during all of the news coverage, and while I found his sentence and punishment justifiable, my friend offered up a unique perspective. He’s married to a Vietnamese woman, and he said she remarked, “What’s the big deal?” Where she was from, and from his time with her overseas, dogs were used as food, just as cows or chickens. In the Western point of view, it’s horrifying, something I concur with. To his wife, it was their culture. Cultural differences sometimes are hard to understand, yet any reasonable person can except them. But are there cultural differences that are just plain wrong, regardless of culture? Wasn’t it the Mayans culture to partake in human sacrifice?

In Japan, namely Taijii, there’s this billion dollar industry to capture dolphins for places like Sea World. What isn’t known to the Japanese people and to the rest of the world, is that remaining dolphins not selected for show, are brutally killed unseen in this film’s title, a small cove. Much like Sharkwater, The Cove is a stunning revelation of human error on a possible environmental catastrophe.

The Cove feels like a true expose done by some guerrilla film makers. From frame one, the film has this urgency to it, and not just because of the 23,000 dolphins that are killed yearly, but because the law and possible government agents are tracking the film makers every step of the way. The entire film is spearheaded by Ric O’Barry, the man who put dolphins are the map business wise, with his skilled training on the sitcom Flipper. The film makers are risking their lives to show what needs to be seen on what happens in the cove. Enlisting a few people with skills in free diving, ILM’s best mold makers, and some risk takers, they are set to sack one of Japan’s most secret and lucrative operations.

Obviously, they succeed, since we have this documentary, yet the film is incredibly tense, as any good spy film made fictionally. Throughout the faces of the villains, the facts, the tension on if they can set up hidden cameras and microphones, we are so involved on their mission, that we aren’t ready for the truth, even though we know or think we know, for what’s happening in the cove, seeing will be believing. The film stops all music and narration for the next handful of minutes for what the cameras caught. The footage is vile, sickening, and crushing, and each second that passes, you are visually beaten by the footage. After a few minutes, if that, I broke down. This bludgeoning footage is a gut-punch to anyone who has ever believed that the dolphin was the dog of the sea, and dogs, as we know, are Man’s Best Friend. If that’s true, regardless of culture (because the Japanese people don’t even know about the mercury-filled meat and that brutal killing is happening at the cove), Man just back-stabbed his own best friend. The Cove is an agenda film, but so what. If I was a dolphin, I would take Douglas Adam’s advice as say “So long, thanks for all the fish! So sad it should come to this. We tried to warn you, but oh dear. You may not share our intellect, which might explain your disrespect.”

The DVD:

Audio/Video: Outside of a few other sources that were used, the picture quality is really good. Even the hidden camera footage is clear as day. The audio is sufficient for a doc too. Lionsgate did this documentary proud, by a pretty good disc. A HD transfer for Blu-ray would not have made a difference.

Commentary: Just by the nature of the events and the creative way to make this film, this track is filled with superb, riveting information by director Louie Psihoyos and his producer. Highly recommended.

The Cove: Mercury Rising: This 20-some odd minute documentary uses some footage from the film, as well as new interviews about the dangerous effects of mercury in our blood system. Worth seeing, as well.

Deleted Scenes, Free Diving-a short piece on the divers, and Trailers round out the disc’s extras.

Conclusion: A powerful, deeply motivating, and saddening piece of human error and one must see regardless on your beliefs on animal rights.

The Film: Rating:

The DVD: Rating: