Character of Willie Keith

Rating: Null/10 (4 August 2002)

The board has voted and the result is unanimous. This film has been thoroughly reviewed here, but having seen it this evening again on tv I feel the need to put in my two cents worth.
Some reviewers have read the novel, some haven't. I'm in the former category, in spades. One wonders how Wouk could have dropped the ball so badly after writing such a great first novel.
The play "The Caine Mutiny Court Martial" drops the Willie Keith story entirely, a sensible decision. But Willie is the central character of the novel. The film is flawed by including his character and love interest at all at the same time it revolves around the concept of all star casting.
Willie is not supposed to be a handsome callow youth. He is in fact overweight and suffers from lordosis. He only gets into the navy because the doctor feels guilty that he kept Willie waiting all day. Willie should look a little like the actor who plays Alfred in Miracle on 34th Street. Richard Dreyfuss might have managed the part. This very complex, almost Shakespearean plot involves not only everything that the movie shows, but Willie's coming of age. In fact, at the end, he captains and then decomissions the Caine as a much changed young man.
It must have been an impossibility for the producers to reconcile everything within Wouk's incredible novel. But instead of their silly compromise with pretty boy Robert Francis and "May Wynn," they should have written a whole new character who is seen only in the context of the dynamics of the Caine. That's major re-writing, but if you can get those kinds of performances out of an all-star cast that knocks your socks off, the other obvious adjustment should have been there too.