The Cove is a “save-the-dolphins” activist commercial, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, as far as it goes. A group of fisherman in Japan is butchering dolphins for food, and the mercury-poisoned meat is being force-fed to Japanese school children and being falsely sold as whale meat. The world would be a better place if this was not happening, obviously. I say definitely add it to the list of thousands of awful injustices happening every day right under our noses that together signal the impending doom of our species. And I think it is quite proper to never attend a dolphin show or a swim-with-dolphins program, in the hopes of economically stopping the slave captivity of these animals.

But that is as far as I am willing to go in praise of this film. I do not really consider it a documentary – it crosses a line with its aggressive and single minded agenda. Its frenetic, hectic style, overly loud music, and poor rhythm and lack of detail make it kind of unpleasant to watch. The “Oceans 11” stuff (which I’ll admit was the main reason I went to the film) was really disappointing – it’s just badly done, with few details and inadequate explanation for it to be truly exciting.

In my opinion, The Cove over-vilainizes the Japanese government for buying the political support of small countries in the IWC to protect its right to kill dolphins. Consider the horror and death that we (the United States) inflicted on the countries of South America during the 20th century to protect the profits of American companies, or the horrors inflicted on Iraq over the last 20 years over our lust for their oil. This is how powerful governments behave – Japan is just defending their right to do what they want, just like the US does all the time on a much larger scale.

It is also a bit glib on the issue of “dolphin self-awareness.” There is research that suggests that bottlenose dolphins have some degree of self-awareness – there are many different species of dolphins – and the results of this research have been criticized in interesting ways. I think a proper documentary would have been more detailed and honest about this, rather than just tossing it out there to manipulate us into caring about the dolphin slaughter. Personally, I’m against their mass slaughter even if they are NOT self-aware.

Lastly, how is this slaughter different than the way cows, pigs, and chickens die in US slaughterhouses? Have you ever seen under-cover footage of how those animals are tortured and die? Believe me, it is every bit as bad as the dolphin horror show shown in this film. Pigs are also really smart animals. Do you think the poor pig writhing to death with its throat slashed on the floor of a slaughterhouse is happy about it? And shouldn’t we be more concerned that it is animals like this pig (and the fucked up energy of its miserable life and horrible death) that we as a society are ingesting, and not the dolphins on the other side of the world (who unlike the pig actually did know freedom most of their lives.)

Again, just for the record, I like dolphins, I’m against commercial dolphin captivity (or ANY dolphin captivity for that matter,) and I think dolphins should be protected from commercial fishing, like whales are. I just want to cast some perspective on this very aggressive “documentary,” that’s all.