The ending ruined this movie
The speech at the end by Barney. It was obvious that Queeg was unbalanced.
shareThe point was that Queeg looked to his crew for help and Keefer turned it into an opportunity to sink the man's career and well being. And when it was finally time for Keefer to own up to his own rhetoric he threw Maryk under the bus instead. So not only would Queeg have been humiliated and cast aside, a reasonably good naval officer (Maryk) would have paid the price while Keefer got on with his own life.
What Barney did was damage control for the meddling of Keefer and he was right to do it.
Barney was a self-righteous ass. Queeg froze and was unable to give orders, and Maryk did the right thing in order to save the ship. It doesn't matter what Keefer did. Somebody on the bridge had to step in and take over. There wasn't time to stand around waiting and wondering if Queeg was going to snap out of it and regain control of himself. Too bad Keefer was too soft to knock Barney down.
shareThe kind of help that Quueg was seeking from his officers amounted to subornation of purjury. Queeg lied to cover up his acts of incompetence and cowardice and wanted his men to go along with the lies out of a sense of loyalty, compassion and/or a sense of family. To have acceded to such a request would have been a breech of duty and dishonorable.
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