The Cove
”The Cove” is much more than just a record of adventure. Like the director’s cover story, the movie is a Trojan horse: an exceptionally well-made documentary that unfolds like a spy thriller, complete with bugged hotel rooms, clandestine derring-do and mysterious men in gray flannel suits. Those men – perhaps cops, perhaps worse – tail Mr. Psihoyos and his crew unrelentingly, determined to prevent anyone from filming the enormously lucrative dolphin capture and slaughter that support the town’s economy and employ its fishermen.
This killing may be legal – dolphins and other small marine mammals are not protected by the ban on commercial whaling – but, as we shall see, the methods used are so nonchalantly brutal and gut-churningly primitive…
Seduced by the familiar rhythms of the heist thriller, we watch as Mr. Psihoyos recruits his dream team – including a former avionics engineer with the Canadian Air Force and a pair of champion free divers – and turns it loose. Planting ingeniously camouflaged, state-of-the-art equipment in and around their target, they capture sights and sounds of uncommon beauty and quiet revelation.
– JEANNETTE CATSOULIS, THE NEW YORK TIMES
Duration: 94 min
Dialogue: English
Subtitles: Finnish
