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The film follows a group of determined environmental commandos as it attempts to document what goes on in a deceptively tranquil lagoon. The leader of the group, and hands down the most compelling person in the film, is Ric O'Barry, who became famous decades ago as the man who both captured and trained the five dolphins who collectively became TV's Flipper and so helped start the multimillion-dollar seaquarium industry.

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First-time director Psihoyos, a National Geographic photographer who is one of the founders of the Oceanic Preservation Society, got interested in O'Barry when the man was barred from speaking at a marine conference. O'Barry told him about the town of Taiji, which masquerades as a dolphin-friendly spot but is quite the opposite.

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Undaunted, O'Barry and Psihoyos put together a kind of dream team of environmental activists with counter-insurgency skills. Cameras are secreted in realistic fake rocks created by George Lucas' ILM, and world-class free-divers place other cameras under water. The object, says the director, is "not just to capture the slaughter but to make people want to change."

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The footage that results is graphic and bloody enough to make the sea run bright red, but because it has an activist slant, "The Cove" makes points that don't depend on those shots for their effectiveness. We learn a lot about dolphin intelligence, witness the ineffectiveness of the International Whaling Commission in the face of Japanese lobbying, and learn how the high mercury levels in dolphin meat bring to mind the earlier mercury poisoning scandal at Minamata.

The small town of Taiji is far from the only place where the 23,000 dolphins that are killed worldwide per year meet their end, but what the town does has symbolic value for all concerned. "If we can't fix that," O'Barry says flatly, "forget about the bigger issues. There's no hope."

(more at the link)

Los Angeles Times