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The Cove Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: PG-13 (for disturbing content) Genre: Documentary Theater release: August 20, 2009 by Lionsgate Directed by: Louie Psihoyos Runtime: 1 hour 32 minutes Cast: Ric O'Barry, Louie Psihoyos, Joe Chisholm, Kirk Krack, Mandy-Rae Cruikshank, Roger Payne, Paul Watson, Isabel Lucas, Hayden Panettiere Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

The Cove is many things—a work of political activism, a piece of investigative journalism, even a sort of real-life espionage thriller—but at its heart, it is a story of one man's efforts to atone for his role in an enterprise that he has come to see as incredibly harmful, even abusive. That man is Ric O'Barry, who got his start as one of the dolphin trainers on the 1960s TV show Flipper and now campaigns to liberate dolphins from captivity all over the world. As O'Barry tells it, Flipper played a huge part in stimulating the domesticated dolphin industry—but it was his experience working up-close with the water-bound mammals that led him to believe it was wrong to turn such animals into slaves for our entertainment.

But it isn't just the fact that so many dolphins are trapped in aquariums that upsets O'Barry. According to him, many if not most of these dolphins are taken from the waters near Taiji, a former whaling town on the southern coast of Japan, and the same fishermen who trap these animals also make a point of slaughtering any dolphins that, for whatever reason, don't seem to merit being sent overseas. And most people are unaware that this slaughter even takes place, partly because it is done in secret, in a cove far from public view.

Ric O'Barry

The Cove, then, is largely about O'Barry's efforts—and those of the filmmakers, who join him on his mission—to bring this slaughter to light. O'Barry himself is too well-known to the local police and fishermen to work all that stealthily; but director Louie Psihoyos, who also appears as an interviewee, assembles a team of divers and professional risk-takers who use military-grade thermal cameras and even the odd special effect (fake rocks created by the folks at George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic!) to sneak into the cove at night and plant high-definition video cameras that can capture once and for all what happens there.

Along the way, the film explores a number of issues that should catch the eye of even those who don't think the slaughter of animals, per se, is a particularly big deal.

For one thing, there is the question of mercury poisoning; dolphins, being as high as they are on the ocean's food chain, tend to have much higher concentrations of mercury in their bodies than regular fish, yet dolphin meat is actually sold to the average consumer in certain Japanese markets. What's more, the filmmakers argue—based on DNA tests of the meat found in Japanese stores—that local dolphin meat is sometimes packaged in ways that trick the average consumer into thinking that it is actually exotic large-whale meat.

Aerial view of the cove

In addition to health concerns and truth-in-advertising concerns, the film also explores how the Japanese government has skirted existing international laws against certain kinds of whaling, as well as how it has bought support from other nations on the International Whaling Commission. Repeatedly, government officials insist to the public and to these filmmakers that the dolphins caught by Japanese fishermen are killed instantaneously, in a humane manner—but the evidence dug up by the filmmakers suggests otherwise.

Then there are the broader environmental questions. The Japanese officials all but admit that the killing of dolphins and porpoises in such large numbers could have an impact on the oceans, when they claim that dolphins are "pests" that are responsible for the falling number of fish; according to these officials, killing so many dolphins and porpoises ought to have a positive impact. But the filmmakers argue that the decline in fish populations is due to the same industrialized human voraciousness that is now affecting dolphins as well.

'Keep Out' signs warn visitors to stay away

The film also raises interesting questions about humanity's relationship to the animal world, and how we project human experience onto creatures such as dolphins. At one point, O'Barry says that the dolphin's "smile" is "nature's greatest deception" because "it creates the illusion that they're always happy." If it weren't for the shape of the dolphin's mouth, he suggests, we would realize just how unhappy such creatures are in captivity.

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