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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