"Men of Honor" is based on the story of Carl Breashear, the first African American to become a US Navy Diver. Cuba Gooding Jr plays Carl Breasher, who grows up in a poor family somewhere in the midwest in the WWII era. Once he is old enough, Carl enlists in the Navy to do something with his life. Carl's father admonishes Carl to "never give up". I think it's the early 1950's.

Carl is assigned as one of the mess stewards on a cargo ship. One hot day he decides to take a swim, ignoring the fact that it's one of the days when only white people can swim. He dives into the sea and some big bruiser swimmer is sent to bring him back. But he quickly outswims the Neanderthal to a marker buoy. His performance earns him a promotion to rescue swimmer on the ship.

Later the mail helicopter gets too close while delivering mail and hits the ship. The helicopter bounces off and crashes into the sea, quickly sinking. Luckily there are a couple of Navy divers on board, led by Chief Petty Officer Billy Sunday (played excellently by Robert De Niro). Billy goes down first in the big clunky deep diving suit and gets the first pilot (who's dead). His partner then goes down and gets the second diver, but as they're reeling him in, the platform he's standing on crashes down on the side of the ship and the second diver falls into the sea. Billy, who's out of his suit in the decompression chamber, immediately goes after his man. Although he does save him, without a suit Billy takes significant damage and his lungs are permanently scarred, such that he can never dive again.

Inspired by the act, Carl decides to become a Navy diver. But he's going to have a hard time at it. At the diving school he meets Billy (who's now the instructor for the school, the class is only a score of potential divers) and finds out that nobody there wants a black man in the team. Only Snowhill (Michael Rapaport) is on Carl's side. But through the hardships and trials, Carl is determined to become a diver.

This is a relatively common plot and probably made a bit more dramatic than real life. Cuba Gooding Jr does a good job as Carl Brashear. Robert De Niro is excellent as the cantankerous Billy Sunday. Charlize Theron has a minor role as Billy's young wife. Aunjanaue Ellis has another small role as Billy's future wife. Michael Rapaport plays the stuttering Snowhill quite well. This is a pure drama, not much action to it. It's about an outcast trying to make it in the armed forces and succeeding after much trouble. From "GI Jane" to "Stripes", it's a common theme with somewhat predictable plot points.

But this is a nice movie and at least is somewhat true, unlike say "U-571" which was totally fictional. The other military movie I've seen this year is "Rules of Engagement" which is more of a courtroom drama ("The Patriot" could also be classified as a military movie but only barely). So if you like military movies like I do at least "Men of Honor" is worth watching.

This review ran short, so what else to add... My favorite Cuba Gooding Jr role is "A Murder of Crows", which is a nice mystery movie and he acts well as the main character; for Robert De Niro that would be "Backdraft" (ok, De Niro doesn't get too many main leads and "Ronin" was not an exceptional movie. He does one type of character well so he's a bit typecast.); for Charlize Theron it's "Reindeer Games" (again, she doesn't get that many major lead roles, leading lady doesn't mean much if the role isn't big). She is a good interviewee from what I've seen on talk shows.