The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial Is a Simple Conclusion for a Singular Filmmaker

The warm yellow hues of William Friedkin’s The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial immediately transports viewers to the TV dramas of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. There is an undeniable draw that these sets–slick, contained, sparklingly clean—possess. Drawing you back to a simpler genre, where on-screen truth was something absolute and unable to cower in a dark corner. When the title flashes on screen in big, bold letters, these nostalgic impulses are being smartly manipulated. Over the course of film, Friedkin moves this story from a place of mind-numbing stability to shakier, amoral ground. Crucially, he understands that the courtroom drama, and the pictures they evoke, were never apolitical spaces. As such, he plays exclusively in the shadows cast from the court’s uneven power dynamics, making a case for every character’s complicity in the mutiny at hand. 

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial follows Barney Greenwald (played by a predictably steely Jason Clarke), who must defend Stephen Maryk (Jake Lacy, who uses his slew of nice guy performances to smarmy effect) from charges of mutiny after seizing a naval ship from Commander Queeg (Keifer Sutherland). A small cast (including the late, great Lance Reddick as a judge who sparingly shatters the delicate proceedings with the boom of his arresting voice) is locked in the courtroom for the majority of the runtime, litigating the nuances of a story in which the facts—masked in excessive, uncompromising detail—slowly expose the ink-black rot coloring the American military.  

While the kind of courtroom dramas this film evokes (namely Rob Reiner’s A Few Good Men) treat their central trials as the endpoints to impassioned professionals’ quests for justice, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial treats its subject as a frustrating distraction for Greenwald. There are only two scenes which don’t take place in the polished courtroom, both of which allow Greenwald to briefly put this case in the context of his shifting personal opinion, hinting at his disdain in sharp, jagged outbursts that break through the film’s smooth, marbled exterior. 

Friedkin treats the high-ceilinged courtroom as the film’s beating heart, away from which, the camera spins into disorientation, tracking the desperate characters as they wander through a web of bland, vaguely connected hallways. These liminal spaces are purposely closer and darker, collecting less light and leaving these people stranded away from the reliable brightness of the court setting.