Rating: 9/10

Writer: Mark Monroe
Director: Louie Psihoyos
Cast: Richard O’Barry, Louie Psihoyos, Hayden Panettiere, Isabel Lucas
Studio: Diamond Docs

Film, as an art, can serve many purposes. They are made to entertain, in order to make us laugh. They are made to dramatize, possibly helping us reflect on our own lives. Films can exist as escapism, while also equally existing as a method to ground us and bring us back down to reality.

But film can also be a weapon. A weapon to expose or comment on something, either from within ourselves or within the world. A weapon to unveil injustice, to the point that it is so horrifying you can not ignore it. A weapon more powerful than any gun or knife or bomb. A weapon for true change.

THE COVE is this type of film. This type of documentary. This type of weapon.

The story starts with Richard O’Barry, a former dolphin trainer for the popular 60s TV show FLIPPER, turned gung-ho animal rights activist. O’Barry is a cowboy if you ever saw one when it comes to the lengths he will go to in his efforts to stop the world’s unregulated dolphin slaughter. It’s an issue O’Barry feels party responsible for, being that he was the one who helped capture the dolphins for the very show that went on to inspire aquatic theme parks like Sea World and various tourist attractions across the world that tout a chance to swim with the dolphins.

Yet, out of this million dollar tourist industry, there is a great horror occurring. Dolphins are being kidnapped from their natural habitats of the wide open ocean, being forced to live out their days in small tanks, performing in a sort of dog-and-pony show that ultimately stresses them out to the point of death. Or worse, they are inhumanely slaughtered for their meat and sold off to fish markets across the world.

If this is news to you, like it was to me, don’t be surprised. But isn’t that the purpose of a documentary? To document something, usually a story untold, in order for it to reach the masses. Well, then do I have a story for you.

O’Barry and his elite crew of OCEAN’S 11-like (their reference, not mine. Although, I do enjoy a good pun) specialists set out for Taiji, Japan, equipped with all sorts of high tech gadgets that would make James Bond and Ethan Hunt alike jealous. Why Taiji? As O’Barry so eloquently puts it, it’s “the little town with a really big secret.” The traditional whaling and fishing village with a diminutive population of only 3,444 also happens to be one of Japan’s largest exporters of dolphins, with an astonishing 2,300 being hunted annually. Being hunted and corralled in a genocidal-like fashion right there in Taiji, in a little tucked away place near the shore. A place known as “the cove.”

And so the crew – made up of O’Barry, the film’s director Louie Psihoyos, an adrenaline junkie, two of the world’s best free divers, and a few cameramen – set out with their hi-tech underwater cameras, their thermal vision cameras, their cameras attached to blimps painted like whales,nd their hi-def cameras that look like rocks (courtesy of Industrial Light & Magic) to expose just what horrors occur in the highly secured area of the cove. What they, and their many cameras, find is unlike any massacre of its kind seen before. A massacre so horrifying that it is hard to watch, yet must be seen.

And, in turn, they use what they find as an object to expose the truth, out in plain sight, yet hidden and covered up so well by the Japanese government. They use it as a weapon, more sharp than a harpoon, more secure than a net. A weapon for change. This is documentary film making at its best. The film is exciting, adventurous, and even humorous at times, but always powerful, purposeful, and clear in its intent and its message. The message that there is injustice in the world, and whether it be at the expense of man, animal, or mother Earth, something needs to be done about it.

To get personal for a moment, I urge you to please see THE COVE, as it is one of those moving documentaries in which you will not leave the theater the same as you did when you arrived. And if you are as moved as I was and want to do something about it, visit the film’s website HERE as well as TakePart.com to find out how you may be able to help. You obviously love whales since you’re here, so spread that around to some dolphins while you are at it!

Other articles that you might like:

• THE COVE director to take on mass extinction, in 3D, for his next film
• Third Annual Cinema Eye Honors nominees announced!
• THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE and more in this week’s DVD, Blu-ray, and TV on DVD new releases
• 15 documentaries make the Oscar shortlist