Plot: Carl Brashear, born in 1931 to sharecroppers, joins the Navy and, after watching the heroics of Billy Sunday, the White son of a sharecropper, determines to become the Navy's first African-American diver. At the Bayonne, N.J., divers' training camp, Sunday is his instructor, and Brasher must endure hazing verging on the murderous. With Sunday and the camp's commander dead set against Brashear's graduating, his physical skills and steely determination, which he got from his father, see him through. Carl and Billy's paths cross again when each needs rehabilitation one from an injury, the other from bitterness. Their wives look on with awe and frustration.
Alternative Plot: Carl Brashear (Cuba Gooding Jr.) is an ambitious sharecropper who joins the U.S. Navy to become the world's first black master diver. But as he works through diving training, the bitter and racist Master Chief Billy Sunday (Robert De Niro) sets out to make Carl's journey as difficult as possible. Despite the entire Navy doubting his potential and sabotaging his training, the determined Carl proves that he can overcome the discrimination around him.
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