Review: ‘The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial’ is a gripping swan song for director William Friedkin

The final scene of “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” takes place at a party where one military man pays tribute to another in the form of a long, candid and unexpectedly bitter toast. Was the abruptness of the filmmaker’s death, just weeks before “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial’s” premiere at the Venice International Film Festival, somehow presaged by this story’s startling, oddly satisfying cut to black? That’s one of the lessons of both “The Caine Mutiny,” Herman Wouk’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1952 novel, and “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” the 1953 stage play he adapted from it. Jason Clarke in the movie “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.” Not much has changed in Friedkin’s adaptation, beyond the fact that the U.S.S. Monica Raymund in the movie “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.” At issue in the case is not just a captain’s fitness to serve but the level of respect that should be accorded the military itself.