The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial Sails the Rough Seas of a Contemporary Update

In this age of IP-based films and TV, the idea seems to be that there's nothing that can't be remade, rebooted, or reimagined. With enough creativity and daring, everything from 21 Jump Street to Barbie dolls can find its way to becoming fresh and vital. And if a hit movie can be made from a children's toy, it should certainly be possible to make something worthwhile out of a revered play based on an award-winning book (the latter which inspired a beloved movie). And yet in Showtime's adaptation of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, the late director William Friedkin struggles mightily with pulling a story steeped in the realities of the 1950s into the 21st century.

Friedkin, who died in August at the age of 87, was no stranger to success with stage adaptations. Back in 1997, his Twelve Angry Men was a hit for Showtime, harnessing the gravitas and star power of Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott. A decade later, Friedkin directed a pair of Tracy Letts plays, Bug and Killer Joe, which saw the then-septuagenarian director in nimble form. Bug in particular took a claustrophobic play with limited staging and imbued it with a ton of cinematic verve and paranoid terror.

With The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, Friedkin is going for something very different: a lean, direct update on the material that never feels sweaty in its efforts at modernization. But such a minimalist adaptation unfortunately can't hide the few updates that have been made, which creak like loose floorboards.

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is a play by Herman Wouk, first produced in 1953, that was adapted from Wouk's own 1951 novel, The Caine Mutiny, which won the Pulitzer Prize. That novel was adapted into the 1954 film The Caine Mutiny starring Humphrey Bogart, which is likely the most well-known version of the story. They all tell the same narrative, about a mutiny aboard the U.S.S. Caine, where Lieutenant Commander Queeg has his sanity questioned and command usurped by Lieutenant Maryk.

Friedkin, who both directed and wrote the screenplay for the update, nudges the story only slightly in its contemporary time period, setting it in the Persian Gulf rather than the Pacific. It's a stripped-down production, with Jason Clarke in fine form as Greenwald, a Navy officer who's conflicted about defending Maryk (played here by Jake Lacy) from the charge of mutiny. Monica Raymund (Hightown; Chicago Fire) plays the prosecuting officer Commander Katherine Challee, and for the bulk of the film, Greenwald and Challee take turns interrogating the witnesses, various officers aboard the Caine and Naval doctors speaking to the mental state of Commander Queeg.

Kiefer Sutherland gets the unenviable task of trying to live up to Bogart in the Queeg role, though the 1954 film (based on the book and depicting the events on the boat itself) and the 2023 one (based on the play and set entirely inside the courtroom) have different mandates for the performance. With Queeg accused of paranoia and mental imbalance during a typhoon, captaining the boat into what would have been certain death, Sutherland must ride the line between sanity and madness, never fully tipping the story's hand one way or another. In his hands, Queeg is mercurial, prickly, and barely holding on from the stress. Bogart aside, if Sutherland brings to mind anything, it's his performance in A Few Good Men, though that may be because Aaron Sorkin clearly borrowed a lot from Wouk's play when he wrote A Few Good Men.

The sparseness of Friedkin's adaptation occasionally works in the film's favor. The cavernous courtroom makes the witnesses' testimony feel more isolated and subjective. The film's best performances are left to stand on their own, which is good news for a strong ensemble which also includes a smug Lewis Pullman and the late Lance Reddick giving a typically authoritative turn as the head of the Navy tribunal (though not a noticeably miscast Jay Duplass as a Navy doctor).

It's in the film's final act where the film really struggles to translate into a 2023 story. Greenwald, arguing on Maryk's behalf, badgers Queeg on the witness stand, calling into question everything from the man's sanity to his bravery. Feeling the guilt of his actions, Greenwald lays into Maryk and the other men and women from the Caine for hanging their commanding officer out to dry. In a monologue that can't possibly escape its Greatest Generation roots, Greenwald talks about the generation that walked into combat when the rest of us were too young or irresponsible to do the same, and that a man like Queeg deserved his crew's support, not their treachery. It's a speech that plays better when talking about World War II, but with Greenwald throwing in references to the attacks on 9/11, the political and moral realities of the War on Terror that resulted are far too complex and thorny for what is essentially a slam-dunk speech that leads right into a smash cut to closing credits.

Is there a way for The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial to feel relevant in 2023? It's hard to say no. This is a story about authority, the moral weight of what to do when that authority goes mad, what we owe our leaders and what our leaders owe us. In the age of hyper-polarized politics, creeping fascism, and a political movement that operates with consequence-free shamelessness, the story of Commander Queeg could have a lot to say. But it would require an adaptation far more muscular than this one. You can't just paper a 9/11 reference over Pearl Harbor and assume the morality will calibrate the same way, lest you end your movie with Jason Clarke delivering a lecture to the youth of today to respect their elders.

If Friedkin's The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial says anything in its strict simplicity, it's that not every story is a universal one. The tale of Commander Queeg and his mutinous men spoke loudly enough to the America of the 1950s that it was made three times in the span of four years. Seventy years later, it's asking too much for its message to remain unchanged.

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial premieres October 6 on Paramount+ With Showtime.

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.