The Cove

And yet that line also reveals what’s iffy about The Cove. One of Psihoyos’ main allies is Richard O’Barry, the renowned former dolphin trainer whose work on Flipper helped popularize dolphin shows worldwide. O’Barry later had a change of heart, and now fights to have all captive dolphins freed, with a passion that leads him to fight on multiple fronts: railing against dolphin-eaters and against government cover-ups of the mercury levels in dolphins, and generally siding with anyone who wants to protect dolphins, whether they want to shutter Sea World or not. As a result of Psihoyos’ close association with O’Barry, The Cove’s ultimate message gets muddled, especially since Psihoyos limits all counter-arguments to a few inarticulate or thuggish boobs. If documentarians want to indicate their causes are just, it helps to present the strongest case possible for the opposition, rather than just vanquishing any handy strawman.

That said, The Cove offers a lot to think about in terms of the future of fishing, and Psihoyos’ gift for using fiction-feature conventions does make a seemingly unpalatable subject entertaining. While dropping facts and arguments left and right, Psihoyos is simultaneously staging a slick, nail-biting caper film. Yet The Cove hews so close to the mode of an action-adventure film—right down to the clichéd villains and show-stopping confrontations—that after a while, it begins to feel like too much of a movie, not an exposé of an actual problem. Real-world crises require the intervention of real people with legitimate disagreements and personal flaws, not characters yanked from spy movies and two-fisted TV adventure shows.