AllMovie

Mix the homoerotic undercurrent of Top Gun with the muddled class conflict and much of the plot of An Officer and a Gentleman, sprinkle liberally with seawater, and throw in an old Journey song used as a romantic theme, and you've got Eiichiro Hasumi's reasonably entertaining but cliché-ridden action adventure, Umizaru. Umizaru's most appealing quality (to those who don't find prurient interest in all the manflesh on display) is probably the unabashed way it appropriates familiar tropes like the tough drill sergeant with a dark secret in his past (effectively played by the stalwart Tatsuya Fuji), the drunken mismatched coupling that unexpectedly (ha!) leads to true love, the wound-too-tight rival who's only out for himself until he learns his lesson the hard way, and the doomed best buddy/runt who finally proves his mettle to his fellow trainees. The film is well paced, the cast is attractive, and a climactic undersea rescue scene features some very nice camera work. Umizaru goes through the motions, but it does so with aplomb.