Rating: TV-14 | Runtime: 108 minutes
Release Date: October 6th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Showtime Networks / Paramount+
Director(s): William Friedkin
Writer(s): William Friedkin / Herman Wouk (play)

My justifiable cause was the captain’s mental breakdown at a time when the ship was in danger.

Unlike the Oscar-nominated 1954 adaptation of Herman Wouk’s novel The Caine Mutiny, William Friedkin’s The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is based on the author’s play instead. Dealing with just the aftermath of what occurred rather than the entire adventure under Lieutenant Commander Queeg’s rule, it allows its courtroom drama to proceed without our knowing the details soon to be revealed in varying states of truth. Rather than work up to Lieutenant Stephen Maryk’s decision to relieve Queeg of his position, it works backward for us to decide if his choice was sound.

The result is a rousing affair as Maryk’s (Jake Lacy) appointed lawyer (Jason Clarke’s Lieutenant Barney Greenwald) is forced to mold the trial into a narrative that ultimately shifts focus off of the defendant and onto the victim (Kiefer Sutherland’s Queeg). Since no one on the panel deciding guilt (led by the late Lance Reddick’s Captain Luther Blakely) was there, everything hinges on the accounts of those who were. And since that inevitably means it will devolve into a “He said/He said” ordeal, facts become less important than emotions. Whether Maryk should have removed Queeg cannot be proven. Greenwald can only try proving Queeg is a man who could make that necessity plausible.

It starts out quite stuffy with its theatricality firmly affixed to its sleeve to the point where I wondered if it might have been more effective to shoot in real-time as a play without all the cuts. Once we discover what’s really happening (after Blakely asks Maryk if he’d like new counsel due to it seeming Greenwald wasn’t taking the case seriously), however, the whole picks up pace and drama with every subsequent witness. The psychiatrists saying Queeg was fit for duty. The Navy men who all harbor personal grudges against him. And, as a bookend being both witness for the prosecution and later the defense, Queeg himself.

I got really invested in this thing. Well, mostly invested in watching Queeg get proverbially destroyed. The fact Friedkin tacking on the potential to uproot those sentiments along with everything that went into building them in an ending that might cause whiplash makes me wonder if that was the whole point. Because the way in which he gets his audience foaming at the mouth for the blood of the old guard in response to abuses (all within the legal realm of his authority) inflicted on the new guard does make me think I was the one actually on trial. Not Maryk. Not Queeg. Me.

It’s a revelation that has me wanting to watch it again knowing what I now know—details the novel and the original Humphrey Bogart-starring film seem to lay out with little wiggle room as far as the truth is concerned. By shrouding those intentions and making everything filter through Greenwald’s tactics in court, however, all we have here is wiggle room. And it’s easy to pick a winning side, especially since our current political climate has us firmly believing that dinosaurs from bygone eras who are still in control should be removed. It’s easy to make the conflict black and white … and easier still today since nuance is all but dead.

Even so, the speed and force at which that epilogue delivers new evidence is jarring. So much so that I cannot deny it subverts some of the overall success. Maybe that’s a product of my feeling duped, but that isn’t entirely my fault when Friedkin so obviously wanted me to feel that way. All in all, it remains a compelling piece with solid performances and relevant themes. And as a swan song for Friedkin himself, that middle finger of a finale couldn’t be more appropriate. Because we shouldn’t always kill the old guard before dancing on their corpses. Some of us wouldn’t even know how to dance without them.

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L-R Lance Reddick as Captain Luther Blakey, Dale Dye as Vice Admiral R.T. Dewey and Kiefer Sutherland as Lieutenant Commander Phillip Queeg in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, streaming on Paramount+ with SHOWTIME, 2023. Photo Credit: Marc Carlini/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME. © 2023 Order in the Friedkin Court, LLC