They shoot dolphins, don't they (The Cove)

The commercial and political impact of Davis Guggenheim's 2006 powerpoint presentation on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, has opened the way for a school of environmental documentaries to make the leap from the small pond of television broadcast (which many were originally aiming for) to the choppy waters of theatrical distribution. A few have been able to keep afloat long enough to capture the public's imagination, among them Earth, Sharkwater, Waterlife and Food, Inc.

With its high production values, charismatic cast of characters and spy caper narrative, whaling documentary The Cove is destined to make such an impact. After all, everyone likes whales, and everyone adores dolphins. The film deserves a wide exposure not just for the worthy cause it defends but because as an impassioned piece of political and environmental activism, it's likely to provoke constructive debate worldwide.

The Cove begins in Taiji, Japan, where we meet an angry and paranoid Ric O’Barry. In the 1960s, it was O’Barry who captured and trained the 5 dolphins who played the title character in the international TV phenomenon known as Flipper. The show inspired a widespread infatuation with dolphins and provided the business model for theme parks built around the performance of sea mammals, now a multi-million dollar industry.

O'Barry's exposure to dolphins in captivity led to a radical change of heart. Convinced these intelligent, self-aware creatures shouldn't live in captivity, he quit the show to become the poster boy for dolphin liberation.

40 years later, he joins forces with filmmaker Louis Psihoyos and his Oceanic Preservation Society, in an attempt to uncover the truth about a secret cove in Taiji. In this small fishing town dolphins are captured and sold to theme parks around the world for a much as $150,000 each. The ones which don't make the cut are killed - as many as 23,000 a year, we are told - their mercury-laden meat sold for consumption around Japan.

Produced by the billionaire entrepreneur Jim Clark, The Cove is shot like a heist film, much in the style of Ocean's Eleven, complete with nail-biting action sequences and two-dimensional villains. A team of specialists - deep-sea divers, underwater sound and camera experts and environmental activists - is recruited for a secret mission. With the local Chief of Police hot on their trail and angry fishermen desperate to protect their trade, they mount an undercover operation to break into the restricted area and photograph what goes in the hidden cove.

The result is both thrilling and chilling. Constructed as an edge-of-your-seat caper, the narrative brings the audience closer and closer to a very inconvenient truth indeed. The slaughter of dolphins does not make for easy viewing, and the filmmakers use every special effect and editing technique borrowed from Hollywood to drive the gruesome point home. While this makes for riveting viewing, it also dilutes the trust we place in the activists.

Increasing the colour saturation to heighten the red hues of the blood-soaked sea, for example, feels a little crass. And when a speech by the Japanese delegate to the International Whaling Commission is intercut with footage of a staged interruption by Ric O'Barry - though it clearly takes place at a different time - you begin to wonder at the methods used by the filmmakers, clearly better activists than they are investigative journalists.

The end justifies the means, or so the argument goes. Viewers worldwide will be won over by the selfless actions of these committed dolphin-savers, as audience awards at Sundance, Hot Docs and the Sydney Film Festival seem to indicate. And yet the approach is not without its flaws.

There are precious few attempts, for example, to understand the anger of the Taiji fishermen, clearly painted as the bad guys here (they're even given nasty nicknames). In one scene, the filmmakers claim that money is not their primary motivation, but rather a sense of outrage at being told what to do by culturally insensitive foreigners. Considering the film is about a bunch of white Americans penetrating illegally into a fishing community in an attempt to deprive the locals of their livelihood, you'd think it was a fair point.

It doesn't help that the filmmakers are unable to recruit any Japanese citizens to join their crusade, and unwilling to present the other side of the argument in a fair manner. It's reported that one of the Japanese counter-arguments is that killing cows for meat isn't that different, to which the filmmakers reply by saying dolphins shouldn't be killed because they're intelligent creatures - an argument whose ethical ramifications are never explored. Instead we get a lot of anthropomorphic dolphins-are-our-friends montages which wouldn't be out of place in an old-fashioned Walt Disney animation (or Flipper for that matter).

Despite its flaws, The Cove offers much food for thought. It asks tough questions about depleted fish populations, the future of fishing and the high-level corruption which runs rife in international organizations such as the International Whaling Commission. The Cove is a good piece of environmental activism, propaganda that's easy to side with: after all, there are many good reasons to oppose whaling. Yet in borrowing from Hollywood storytelling to increase the impact and appeal of their documentary, the filmmakers harpoon themselves in the foot. By refusing to present balanced, researched arguments, state the facts clearly and examine its own cultural bias, The Cove sacrifices some of its integrity in the hope of reaching a wider audience. Mission accomplished.

The Cove is on limited release in the US and hits Australian cinemas August 20th.

They shoot dolphins, don't they (The Cove)