FORMULAIC YET POIGNANT STORY HONORABLE EFFORT.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

``Men of Honor'' is one of those beat-the-odds (and adversity, and the system, and prejudice, and whatever else that always needs beating), inspirational movies. It's formulaic and fairly predictable, as these things always are.

But the difference between this true story-based movie and the likes of, say, ``Remember the Titans,'' is that ``Honor'' ultimately earns its triumphalism.

The hero is genuinely admirable, the forces arrayed against him formidably daunting, and the minds that need to be changed convincingly hardcased and human.

The film's subject is Carl Brashear, a barely literate, Kentucky sharecropper's son who became the first African-American Master Chief Diver in the U.S. Navy. His is quite a struggle, as you might imagine. Even though Harry Truman integrated the armed forces in the early '50s, black servicemen were still relegated to menial roles for years afterward. One who attempted to rise to the elite, dangerous specialty that Brashear shot for, even when played with the utmost self-control by the irresistibly likable Cuba Gooding Jr., was simply considered uppity all up and down the line.

And that's only part of Brashear's amazing story. While we can pretty well guess that his early struggles against virulent hatred and unconscionable unfairness will only make him stronger, a much more personal and devastating event later on in life arrays a whole different set of biases against him.

For the most part, Gooding faces the many obstacles strewn in the man's path with quivering-lipped perseverance. Yet there are some helpful moments when the real price Brashear pays for his determination - emotionally alienating his doctor wife, strongly played by newcomer Aunjanue Ellis - prove that, superhuman as his capabilities might be, he is truly just a man.

A much more complex performance is, not surprisingly, provided by Robert De Niro. As Billy Sunday, a composite of three different topkicks Brashear actually suffered and learned from, De Niro delivers a snarlingly showy, yet much more convincing, redneck roundup than he did in his last deep-fried outing for ``Cape Fear.'' A Chief Master Diver himself, sidelined by the bends and pretty angry about it, Sunday is also a problem alcoholic and congenital rebel. Worse, he, too, is a sharecropper's son, and the last thing he's receptive to is a black man who thinks they not only share aspirations and abilities, but some kind of roots, too.

Yeah, that's the last thing ... and, of course, a point comes when self-sabotaging Sunday reaches the end of his airhose.

The film is directed by George Tillman Jr., and although it's a quite different, tougher-minded story than the filmmaker's hit ``Soul Food,'' ``Men of Honor'' shares a certain corny earnestness with that movie. That's right for this stirring kind of material, though, and it's balanced nicely by suspenseful underwater sequences and a bold - for these lightly treading, commercially correct history-revising days, anyway - determination to acknowledge racism at its ugliest.

All things considered, it's an honorable effort.

``MEN OF HONOR''

(Rated R: violence, racism, language)

The stars: Cuba Gooding Jr., Robert De Niro, Aunjanue Ellis, Charlize Theron.

Behind the scenes: Directed by George Tillman Jr. Written by Scott Marshall Smith. Produced by Robert Teitel. Released by 20th Century Fox.

Running time: Two hours, nine minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Three stars