Winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, The Cove follows a high-tech dive team on a mission to discover the truth about the international dolphin capture trade as practiced in Taiji, Japan. Utilizing state-of-the-art techniques, including hidden microphones and cameras in fake rocks, the team uncovers how this small seaside village serves as a horrifying microcosm of massive ecological crimes happening worldwide.--©Official Site
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Reviews
The Observer
Philip French
"This outstanding documentary is as exciting as a thriller and centres on a character as fascinating as William Wilberforce's mentor, Captain John Newton, the skipper of a slave ship who took holy orders, wrote "Amazing Grace" and became a fervent abolitionist."
25/10/2009
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Time Out
Trevor Johnston
"However, what lifts the film beyond effective consciousness-raising into the realms of human tragedy, is the startling irony that project instigator O’Barry is none other than the trainer of ’60s TV icon ‘Flipper’, whose popularity spawned the whole dolphin show explosion in the first place. The sadness in his eyes, a window on the churning emotions he must confront on a daily basis, proves the most haunting image in a film that will leave you better informed, tearful and really angry."
22/10/2008
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The Sunday Times
Edward Porter
"His movie delivers a rattling good yarn without stinting on reportage: we’re told about the trade in dolphin meat, the high levels of mercury poisoning in the creatures’ bodies and the dodgy politics of the International Whaling Commission. Psihoyos and his gang eventually got the footage they were after. The use made of it in the film is restrained and harrowing. "
25/10/2009
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The New York Times
Jeannette Catsoulis
"Like the director’s cover story, the movie is a Trojan horse: an exceptionally well-made documentary that unfolds like a spy thriller, complete with bugged hotel rooms, clandestine derring-do and mysterious men in gray flannel suits."
31/07/2009
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Total Film
Jonathan Crocker
"Gripping exposé, harrowing horror-thriller and devastating agitprop, it takes us to “a little town with a big secret”."
22/10/2009
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Variety
Justin Chang
"Eco-activist documentaries don't get much more compelling than "The Cove," an impassioned piece of advocacy filmmaking that follows "Flipper" trainer-turned-marine crusader Richard O'Barry in his efforts to end dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan. "
19/01/2009
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The Times
Tom Charity
"Part agit-prop, part caper thriller, part horror film, this exposé of the undercover trade in dolphin meat works hard to rouse our outrage."
24/10/2009
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Channel 4 Film
Richard Luck
"Let's just say that after an evening watching The Cove, Jeremy Clarkson would be putting a call through to Greenpeace."
26/10/2009
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Empire Magazine
Philip Wilding
"A taut, thrilling documentary that plays out like a heist movie while never overshadowing its message or activist credentials."
26/10/2009
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The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
"It's a remarkable portrait of ceaseless conscience purging. O'Barry's big, wet eyes haunt you even longer than that ocean of blood."
22/10/2009
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The Independent on Sunday
Nicholas Barber
"Upsetting but thrilling exposé"
25/10/2009
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The Scotsman
Alistair Harkness
"This damaging, mercury-rich mammal meat is then sold to unsuspecting Japanese shoppers who think they're buying whale meat; it's also fed to unsuspecting schoolchildren as part of their government-supplied lunches. These are just some of the sickening revelations in this impassioned piece of agit-prop, which goes to great lengths to penetrate Taiji's tight security to expose this problem in gruesome detail."
23/10/2009
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