The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial

Can it ever be right to seize control of a naval vessel from its Commanding Officer?

Lance Reddick (l.) as the chief judge and Kiefer Sutherland (r.) as the embattled Commander Queeg

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (2023)

Streaming on Showtime

Turning plays into movies is tricky.  The first, inescapable question is:  Can action and dialog that’s been confined to the stage be “opened up” to give the movie a visual flair?  That’s what most play-to-movie adaptations aim for.

The more daunting option is to construct a compelling story that risks looking stage-like yet trusts a smartly deployed camera and talented actors to keep an audience in suspense.

The director here, the late William Friedkin, who died in August, chose this risky second path, and rose to the challenge superbly.

Today Friedkin is best remembered for the high voltage cop procedural The French Connection (1971) and the demonic thriller The Exorcist (1973).  Over his career he made 20 features in a variety of styles, but here he’s chosen a highly respected play that’s been adapted for the movies twice before and taken his own, radically pared down approach.

Knowing a bit of background helps to understand what Friedkin was tackling.  Herman Wouk’s 1951 novel The Caine Mutiny spun a morally intriguing tale of senior naval officers, in the midst of a violent storm, seizing control of their vessel from its commanding officer.

The novel was famously adapted to the screen in 1954, starring Humphrey Bogart as the ship’s martinet Lieutenant Commander Phillip Francis Queeg.

Jason Clarke as tough defense attorney Barney Greenwald works to discredit Queeg

The book included the trial of the mutineers, and in 1953 Wouk turned that section into a hit Broadway play, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.  I’d seen the play handsomely mounted in the 1970s at L.A.’s Ahmanson Theater.

That production was elegantly directed by Henry Fonda, and I can still recall the way the entire cast, and each actor before and after speaking, entered and exited with scrupulous military deportment.

Vividly remembering it, I suspected that Friedkin, working from his own screenplay, would need to make naval discipline and good order snap right into place.  If the camera slackened, so would our belief in what was at stake.

So crackling is the air that witnesses, attorneys and presiding officers can look as if they’re on trial, too.  Friedkin doesn’t let any of the actors “charm” us away from the camera’s unforgiving grip.

And the stakes are frightfully high for both the accused naval officer and the commander he overruled.  Wouk’s novel and play were set during World War II.  Friedkin's script moves the action to the present day where the story’s trouble spot is the Persian Gulf.

We’re witnessing the court-martial of Lieutenant Stephen Maryk (Jake Lacy), who during a raging storm seized control of the minesweeper Caine from its commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Queeg (Kiefer Sutherland).

Monica Raymund’s lead prosecutor is a wily courtroom tactician clashing with Greenwald

Charged with mutiny, Maryk desperately needs a strong advocate to avoid serving 15 years in the brig.  His reluctant defense attorney, Lieutenant Barney Greenwald (Jason Clarke), thinks Maryk's defense is shaky.

Greenwald believes he can only win if he convinces the presiding panel of five naval officers that Queeg was mentally ill when Maryk as executive officer urgently relieved him of command.

To prove that Queeg at that perilous moment presented more danger to the Caine than Maryk did, Greenwald will have to show the naval officers judging the case that Maryk made the right choice.

He can only do that by manipulating Queeg to melt down on the stand. Greenwald hopes he can goad Queeg into trembling and quivering so obviously during his testimony that the panel will feel bound to acquit Maryk.

But Queeg, with 21 years of unblemished service behind him, enters the courtroom with the clear advantage of long experience.

At the height of the storm, with Queeg and Maryk at odds, the other officers on deck sided with Maryk and ceased following Queeg’s orders.

To Queeg that was indisputably mutiny, and he vehemently insists that the panel of judges can’t frame the incident any other way.

But will the panel, headed by Captain Luther Blakely (Lance Reddick), go along?

Reddick died at age 60 shortly after filming was completed.  Alas, so did Friedkin, at age 87.  For his last movie, Friedkin has gone out hitting hard but with an absorbing mastery of craft.  There isn’t a sensational or false note anywhere in the picture.

Friedkin, cinematographer Michael Grady and editor Darrin Navarro don’t permit any distractions.  All the action, except for a shocking final scene in a hotel ballroom, is confined to the courtroom.

Each witness sits at the very center of the court in a hard wooden chair.  It hurts just to look at it.

Measured cutting and adroit camera set ups keep tension high.  We sometimes watch from odd angles, but shots this incessantly clean and crisp only make us wonder whether the truth is being revealed or camouflaged.

By varying the camera’s distance from forbiddingly wide to needlingly close, the movie baits and teases us. Which of these highly disciplined men, Maryk or Queeg, is the craftier deceiver?

So crackling is the air that witnesses, attorneys and presiding officers can look as if they’re on trial, too.  Friedkin doesn’t let any of the actors “charm” us away from the camera’s unforgiving eye.

He pulls superb performances from everyone.  A military tribunal is convincing only if the uneasiness at its heart is on every actor’s face.  Chain of command rules the lives of these men and women.  If they're not fully credible here, their standing in the Navy could be permanently tarnished.

Sutherland is impeccable as Queeg.  His preening arrogance in his opening testimony is palpable yet feels in some way more absurd than vicious.  As ship commander he had his own way of imposing discipline.

And did he ever. Anyone serving under him came to understand:  don’t dare let your shirttail hang out, forget to unplug a coffee pot or, heaven forbid, steal more frozen strawberries than you’re entitled to.  The wrath of Queeg was sure to follow.

But under Greenwald’s examination, Queeg’s self-control slowly unravels as he tries to defend his petty tyranny and high-handed refusal to listen to others.  Sutherland handles Queeg's slow meltdown in such a carefully measured way, we actually see the commander’s mind slip from its moorings.

As in Oppenheimer earlier this year, Jason Clarke makes for a formidable legal adversary.  His Greenwald burrows in on Queeg but not without compassion.  His slow, almost merciful undermining of Queeg's stability elicits deeply buried truths.

Lacy is properly gruff as the defendant Maryk, whose overconfidence Greenwald sees through even while dutifully representing him.

Jake Lacy is the edgy, stubborn defendant, a young executive officer charged with mutiny

Monica Raymund makes a fiery lead prosecutor with her stiletto-point interrogation and nimble courtroom maneuvering.  She sneeringly picks apart Greenwald’s flimsier ploys, backing the defense attorney onto the defensive for most of the trial.

The steely, dignified Reddick is uniquely powerful as the head judge who intuits and voices for all the participants the deep sadness of “this strange, tragic trial”.

Onstage back in the ’70s, under Fonda’s direction, Hume Cronyn mesmerized as a crumbling Queeg and John Forsythe was a tenacious Greenwald.  Fonda well understood the tumult, since he’d played Greenwald on Broadway opposite Lloyd Nolan as Queeg.  What an acting feast that must have been!

But at the play’s opening in 1953 WWII still provided a largely unambiguous backdrop.  Wouk’s original naval yarn didn’t comment on the conflict at large.  It didn’t need to.

Today, post 9/11, in a foggier military and political era, all hands here manage to do rough but balanced justice to a provocative test of valor.

In taking on the task, in a constrained format that nonetheless brings home a stirring portrait, Friedkin in his last movie earns an honorable salute and farewell.