Uneven but moving tale of someone who wouldn't quit

(CNN) -- "Men of Honor" is based on a true story, and it's a big, grand, old-fashioned Hollywood drama with all the right emotional notes struck in all the right emotional places.
Larger-than-life real stories about people who have lived remarkable lives often provide great dramatic fodder. But sometimes, wonderful stories -- with real timelines covering decades -- don't necessarily lend themselves to well-crafted, tightly structured plots.
The problems are varied: what to include, what to leave out, where to begin, where to end, which characters are a blend of many people, which are left as they were in real life. All these questions must be answered, and the answers are different in every situation.
"Patton" (1970), about the legendary Army Gen. George Patton, was a huge hit and won George C. Scott the Academy Award. "Hoffa" (1992) with a brilliant Jack Nicholson in the title role, bombed. Why did one soar and the other fall? The reasons are varied, but the script for "Hoffa" never ultimately conveyed the man behind the image.
"Men of Honor" is based on another true story, and again the hero in the tale gets somewhat lost in the translation. Still, the film, though flawed, manages to be emotionally stirring.
Another problem is that, despite its size and human scope, this film directed by George Tillman Jr. ("Soul Food" 1997) still gets an overblown Hollywood treatment. Some of the decisions regarding what to tell and how to tell it are ill-advised.
A sharecropper's son
The heart and soul of this story is Carl Brashear, a remarkable man born in 1931 to a sharecropper family in Sonora, Kentucky. At the age of 17, he became one of the first African-Americans to join the newly integrated United States Navy. During his 40 years of service, he slowly forced the Navy into promoting him to the rank of master chief diver -- a historical first.
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To begin with, Brashear beat all the odds in the early 1950s by getting the Navy brass to reluctantly agree to train him for a position with the elite dive school program. Then, in the late '60s, after years of serving with distinction (and still the only black man in the Navy divers), Brashear lost his leg during a freak accident while retrieving a nuclear warhead from the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.
Again he fought back, becoming the first amputee to return to active duty in the armed services, where he finally achieved his lifelong goal: the rank of master chief diver -- the first, and so far only black sailor to do so.
Starring in this juicy role is Academy Award-winner Cuba Gooding Jr. Another Oscar owner, Robert De Niro, appears in the role of Master Chief Petty Officer Billy Sunday. Both actors undoubtedly are considering the film their bid for this year's Academy gold.
De Niro's portrayal of the alcoholic and abusive dive school instructor allows him to chomp on the scenery. He's both Brashear's longtime nemesis and someone who eventually becomes his greatest supporter.
A fight to belong
The role of Sunday is a made-up character embodying all the white-hot racism Brashear suffered during his long battle for acceptance. After bedeviling Brashear throughout the film, Sunday in the final reel becomes the reluctant ally who helps the diver fight his bigoted opponents -- a dramatic climax indeed. He gets to have it both ways!
The film begins in a beautifully shot flashback with a young Brashear working in the fields with his father (Carl Lumbly), a saintly man who wants more for his son than the daily view of a plow and a mule's rear end. With his father's final words -- "You get in there and fight Carl, don't quit on me, ever" -- ringing in his ears, Carl enlists in the Navy as soon as he can.
But he soon finds that President Truman's dreams of desegregation in the armed services are more theory than fact. He, and all his fellow black sailors, are confined to mess duty and other menial tasks.
After a brave and unsolicited display of his swimming skills (and 100 written requests to become a diver) Brashear finally convinces his reluctant superiors to put him in Sunday's elite school. His long and dangerous journey to the realization of his seemingly impossible dream now begins -- as does the meat and potatoes portion of our main story. This also is the point where all the characters begin to appear in stark shades of black and white, good and evil. There are no gray tones here.
Michael Rapaport is one of the good guys. He plays Snowhill, a fellow diver-in-training, the only one willing to share a barracks with Brashear. Powers Boothe and David Keith play brief roles as white men who halfheartedly support Brashear.
Bad guys abound
That's about it for the Navy's nice people. Hal Holbrook has a strange little role as Mister Pappy, a demented racist, who, as the commanding officer of the dive school, terrorizes trainees from a watchtower above the base. At one point he commands Sunday to flunk Brashear, saying, "Some things don't mix. Do they, Master Chief?"
David Conrad plays Lt. Hanks, an invented character, and a particularly odious individual presumably standing in for hundreds of bigots. He hounds Brashear and Sunday throughout their careers.
Brashear's journey, in film as in real life, is multifaceted. But this script by first-time screenwriter Scott Marshall Smith is uneven -- brimming with too much information one moment and lacking in other places. But the movie's greatest flaw is bringing Sunday and Brashear together in the end. This over-the-top scene in a courtroom will either leave you standing and cheering or barfing into your popcorn bucket. Charlize Theron, one of Hollywood's hardest-working actresses (have you noticed she's in every other movie coming out lately?), plays a small role as Sunday's long-suffering wife. Aunjanue Ellis, in another tiny part, portrays Brashear's wife -- another long-suffering Navy spouse, of course.
The film also is drenched by a pompous score by Mark Isham, and it wears its still-beating heart upon its soggy sleeve. But, despite its faults, "Men of Honor" is a gripping, inspirational tale about human nature overcoming its own worse traits again -- barely.
"Men Of Honor" opens nationwide on Friday. Rated R. 128 minutes.
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