Apple TV+'s The Line, focusing on the controversial case of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, pushes the same button as The Caine Mutiny

The A.V. Club

"Herman Wouk’s 1951 novel, The Caine Mutiny, is one of the most honest and unsettling pieces of fiction ever written about military discipline and order," says Noel Murray. "It tells the story of a clearly unfit naval officer—someone who is at best petty and indecisive and at worst cruel and dangerously incompetent—who may nonetheless have been wronged when his men relieved him of his command during a mission. It’s a challenging book (and later a play and movie), pushing the audience to consider what it takes to fight wars, and whether we should hold the people we entrust with national security to the same moral and behavioral standards we would hold, say, a supermarket manager. At its best, the four-hour Apple TV+ docuseries The Line (and the podcast that preceded it) pushes some of those same buttons. The Line looks back at one of the controversial military war crimes cases of recent years—the trial of Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL accused of murdering an Iraqi prisoner—and presents multiple points of view on what happened and why. On the whole, the series is overlong and repetitive, and is missing some clarifying voices. But directors Jeff Zimbalist and Doug Shultz and their team (including the prolific documentary producer Alex Gibney) have some startling footage shot by Gallagher’s squad. They also have interviews with most of the story’s principals, including Gallagher himself, who remains defiant in the face of any suggestion that he acted inappropriately."