K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)

A sad and confused movie. It's not Kathryn Bigelow's finest hour as a director but I don't image there's too much that could have been done with the script, which seems as hastily thrown together as the submarine itself.The most egregious jolt to continuity probably arrives near the end. Liam Neeson, the Executive Officer, has been a paragon of good sense throughout, pleading the cause of humanity in the face of skipper Tom Ford's blockheaded determination to stretch his boat's envelope and refuse aid from an American ship nearby.The crew mutinies. They handcuff Ford, who sometimes seems deranged, and turn over the boat to Neeson. The officers agree with the act. The commissar initiates the act. Then Neeson's character, with a pistol in his hand, spins around in a neat "about FACE" and releases Ford from his shackles, turning command back over to him with a big smile. The non sequitur drops to the deck with a heavy CLUNK heard throughout the boat.There is little joy on K-19. The boat itself was hastily assembled in an attempt to keep up with US innovations and the recklessness showed up repeatedly in one accident after another. The photographer and art director turn the boat into the kind of dismal mechanical prison that no US submarine ever looked like. The lights are low, the fittings shabby and peeling, the bulkheads warped and fragile. It's enough to kill your appetite if you're not eating caviar and drinking red wine.But I can see why this was greenlighted. "Das Boot" had been a great critical and commercial success a decade earlier. "Das Boot" was a movie about a German U-boat in wartime and it invested its characters with human features. This is a Hollywood movie that tries to do the same thing for the USSR that "Das Boot" did for Germany. Except that now we have CGIs which allow more in the way of fires and explosions than Wolfgang Peterson had in 1982.As the captain, Ford is rather dull; Neeson is a more animated and thoughtful figure; Peter Sarsgaard as the reactor officer is winning in a naive boyish way. Loved his cowardly refusal to enter the irradiated Compartment of Doom.The whole thing can be construed as a post Cold War analogy. The Russian people were just as good as anybody else but their leadership was whimsical and stupid.

Director Kathryn Bigelow, Awards Notwithstanding, still hasn't Made a Film as Memorable or As Good as Near Dark (1997). One Wonders if this one had a Residue of Her Husband's Influence and Obsession with all things Underwater, because why on Earth (as well as under the sea) would She Take On this Type of Iffy Sub-Genre Movie Making.The Submarine Picture has a Long and Loyal Following among Specialized Film-Buffs. it remains a Rarely Done, but an occasional Dive into War Machinery that has as Its Setting the Stuff of Confinement like a Prison, and the Participants might Want to Escape, Save Their Own Lives and Possibly the World.This was a Risky Investment, a Multi-Million Dollar Production with a Suspect Subject like the Cold War that Did Not Involve Spies but an Attempt at the Soviet Union to Keep Up with the Arms Race. That Is, make the Nuclear Missiles Mobile. The Film Flopped.The Reasons are Many and Varied but it Doesn't Mean the Movie is Bad. It's Well Done and Holds its Own Against Others of It's Type. The Use of Claustrophobic Chaos that the Genre Demands with added World War III Paranoia makes it a Movie Worth Watching. Not the Least of its Attraction are the Two Leads Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson that for Better or Worse, are Watchable most of the time.It's Long, Demanding of Empathy that is Not Always an Easy Thing to Pull Off with one's Enemy, and is Based on an Historical Event. Not Everyone is going to come Aboard with the Type of Mindset Required for this Type of Thing. That is an Open Mind. The kind that makes one Think of Implications from a Nationalistic and Political Xenophobia that Could and Has Resulted in the Puny Humans that have Their Fingers on the Button.

Long after Harrison Ford was Han Solo, he was Captain Alexi Vostrikov, and long before Liam Neeson was Brian Mills, Qui Gon Jin or Oskar Shindler, he was Captain Mikhail Potenin in "K-19: Widowmaker"For sown unknown reason I don't like submarine movies, I just find them slow moving and dull (That includes "The Hunt For Red October") "U571" is the only exception. Ford and Neeson are always watchable though, so I decided to give it a go when it was starting on TV tonight. Plot In A Paragraph: It's the height of the 1960's Cold War, and Russia launches the K-19, a flagship nuclear submarine. Aboard this submarine are Captain Alexei Vostrikov (Harrison Ford) and executive officer Mikhail Polenin (Liam Neeson) who is popular amongst the crew. Tension run high between the two, as they clash on regularly occasions . When the vessel's nuclear reactor system begins to leak, the two men and their crew must become brave countrymen to avoid a disaster.It was what I expected it to be (OK I didn't expect either of them to go with dodgy accents) a slow moving tension filled movie on a sub. Though it was a refreshing change to see a movie where Americans were not the brave heroes. The ending didn't fill me with the anger it should have (which was a shame) and I'll probably never watch it again, as whilst Ford and Neeson are as watchable as always, but these are not two of their finest hours.

This movie is dramatic, hard to watch, because what you see in the movie is what happened in realty. If you browse Wikipedia about the K-19 submarine, you notice that every detail in the movie is described in Wikipedia. It is troubling seeing the sacrifices.I am not a fan of Harrison Ford outside the Jones character, but if you look to the picture of the real Russian commander, he looks like Harrison Ford! The movie is good because it relates what happened, and it does it so well. Very good filming, acting is not the best because there are several known American actors and it's not easy to imagine them as Russian people. Moreover the main cast in their characters look like too many known American movies.What's not pleasant in this movie, it's the constant melodramatic soundtrack. Someone in Hollywood doesn't understand how art works, it doesn't need to look pitiful to have the spectators emotionally involved. On the other hand it's what made the movie popular for the masses. Would be good to have such movies with a soundtrack OFF option on a DVD edition.