The Cove

In the 1960s, Richard O'Barry enjoyed a lucrative career as a specialized animal trainer; he captured the five dolphins that were used in the popular television series Flipper, and taught them the tricks and special commands they used on the show. Four decades later, O'Barry has renounced his former life as a trainer and become an animal rights activist, speaking out against the hunting of aquatic mammals and keeping them in captivity. O'Barry is not welcome in Taiji, a town along the Japanese coast where hunting dolphins is a major part of the local economy, but he and a group of activist filmmakers made their way into the city as well as the carefully guarded harbor in hopes of documenting the abuse of dolphins by fisherman and the poisoning of the waters that has taken a toll on the marine ecology. O'Barry and his colleagues captured some beautiful underwater footage as well as shocking images of how the town's fisherman have sullied the dolphins and their habitat, and director Louie Psihoyos has used this material as the basis for the documentary The Cove, which received its world premiere at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
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Toronto Star Review, Peter Howell, 4 out of 4

The Cove: Guerrilla filmmaking at its best

A documentary exposé on the covert capture and slaughter of dolphins in Japan. Directed by Louie Psihoyos. 92 minutes. At the Cumberland. PG
At the Sundance Film Festival in January, where The Cove premiered to applause, gasps and the first of its many awards, programmer John Cooper spoke of how filmmakers' attitudes towards the environment have changed.

"They aren't coming in to spur activism any more," he said. "They're activists themselves."

And how. The Cove plays like the James Bond version of an environmental doc. It could also be viewed as a horror movie for the carnage it depicts. Yet it's quite simply one of the year's best movies.

Director Louie Psihoyos, a top National Geographic photographer, leads a crack team of environmentalists and divers probing reports of dolphin abuse in the marine town of Taiji, Japan.

What they discover, using hidden cameras from Industrial Light & Magic and underwater microphones, is a slaughterhouse where thousands of dolphins are butchered alive, often after watching their terrified offspring killed first.

Blue water turns red from the carnage and the sounds of pain and alarm from the animals are unmistakeable and unforgettable.

More than 23,000 dolphins and porpoises are killed in Japan every year. Some of the harvested meat is sold illegally as a food delicacy, despite having dangerously high levels of mercury caused by water pollution. Dolphin meat is often falsely labelled as whale, which compounds the problem, since whales are also a highly threatened species.

Many other dolphins are shipped to water parks around the globe to be used for entertainment. Marine parks pay up to $150,000 (U.S.) apiece for live dolphins, who suffer greatly from being kept in captivity.

One of the documentary team members is Richard O'Barry, the American marine expert who helped create the Flipper TV series of the 1960s.

He personally captured the four or five bottlenose dolphins that played Flipper, but later regretted his involvement when he realized how sensitive the animals are and how much they suffered. He recounts how the original Flipper, a dolphin named Kathy, died in his arms after she refused to live in captivity anymore.

O'Barry changed from dolphin hunter to dolphin protector and now travels the world with his message that these are sentient, intelligent beings.

Other members of the team include Vancouver's Mandy-Rae Cruickshank, the world-recorder holder in the sport of freediving, which explores the depths without aid of oxygen tanks.

The Cove emphatically gets the word out, also showing how duplicitous the Japanese government has been about living up to its commitments as a member of the International Whaling Commission, which is supposed to conserve marine life rather than exploit it.

It is not your average eco-doc. It's guerrilla filmmaking at its best, and it is hard to watch. Parents of small children should take particular note of this warning. As tough as it is, the film is essential viewing for anyone who cares not only about the planet, but also about creatures who are almost as high on the evolutionary scale as man.

No one who sees The Cove will ever again watch a dolphin show with a clear conscience.

(This is an updated version of a review originally published during the Sundance Film Festival.)