"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Monday, July 2, 2018

Countdown to Thirteen: Black Sea (2014, R)


This is an interesting film, although I do think it ultimately tries to do too much, twisting the narrative in several different directions and shifting the slant on a very contained story.  Still, the acting is excellent, and it’s a good, tense psychological drama with a unique setting that lends itself to creating a taut atmosphere.

The recently laid-off sub captain Robinson is tired of being ground down and tossed aside by guys with fat wallets and no skill.  When he gets wind of a potentially-immense payday in the form of recovering honest-to-goodness Nazi gold from a sub that disappeared in the Black Sea during World War II, Robinson gets his hands on a rickety old sub and puts together a crew to sail it.  However, in the icy depths, the seeds of discord grow, and when all hands are needed to keep the sub operational, a temper is a dangerous thing.

There are some neat themes going on here, and right from the start, strong conflicts are hinted at among the crew.  As Daniels, the suit forced into going along, points out to Robinson, it doesn’t take the crew long to figure out that a man’s “equal share” will get bigger if he takes out a few of the guys he’s meant to be sharing it with.  Besides that, a lot of these guys are out of work and desperate, and they don’t all think it’s fair that Daniels, as well as a novice Robinson recruits, should earn the same as experienced sailors like them.  Throw in the fact that half the crew is British, half is Russian, and very few speak both languages, and you have a recipe for mistrust, suspicion, and tribalism.  The whole sub is a pressure cooker, and it’s only a matter of time before it blows.

I really like all that stuff.  On the British-Russian divide, I appreciate that pretty much all the Russian dialogue is subtitled (the main exceptions being when someone is translating between the two languages, so we get what they’re saying that way.)  When you have English speakers encountering someone who speaks a different language, it’s not uncommon to have the non-English dialogue go untranslated, leaving you just with the English.  Here, though, we know what the Russians are saying even if the British crew doesn’t, and that creates a nice effect of two different conversations happening on top of one another, and both sides get warier and warier as they continue to misunderstand each other.

However, the film starts to wander for me in the second half, with the introduction of several twists – of both the physical danger and shocking revelation variety – that turn the focus of the story.  There’s still tension and paranoia, albeit for different reasons, and it still makes for good drama, but it’s not as interesting to me as the conflicts earlier in the film.

As I said, strong acting.  Robinson is played by Jude Law, who delivers a fine performance as a solid man who’s been pushed to his limit and is just trying to hold his crew together.  The film also features Scoot McNairy (Gordon from Halt and Catch Fire,) David Threlfall (Frank from the U.K. Shameless,) Tobias Menzies (former William Elliot in Persuasion,) and Ben Mendelsohn (who I loved as George VI in Darkest Hour last year.)  I’m not familiar with Konstantin Khabenskiy, who plays Robinson’s right-hand man, but I like his performance a lot as well.

What this film doesn’t have?  Is much Jodie Whittaker.  Okay, so she’s the only woman named in the opening credits, and I bet she’s onscreen for less than a minute.  She plays Robinson’s ex-wife Chrissy – we see her for a hot second in the present day and then a bit longer in a dreamy flashback montage, in which her only lines in the movie are fuzzed over.  Needless to say, I can tell you basically nothing about her acting in this movie.

I get that, once they get on the sub, all the action stays there, and I understand that choice.  It makes the viewer claustrophobic, keeps us trapped down below with the crew as tensions rise.  It makes sense.  However, all I will say is that, when a film like this has a virtually all-male cast and makes zero bones about it, there is no earthly reason for anyone to lose their minds over a female-led Ghostbusters or Ocean’s 8.

Accent Watch

Honestly, I can’t remember – I watched this last week, and she speaks so little.  I want to say Northern, but I can’t swear to that.

Recommend?

In General – I think so.  In my opinion, the first half is definitely the strongest, but it’s still a good film that creates a highly-effective atmosphere of tension.

Jodie Whittaker – No.  There’s practically nothing here.

Warnings

Violence, language, sexual references, and thematic elements.

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