Another Cold War "Epic"

Rating: Null/10 (4 January 2003)

It's supposedly the first time a film was made based on the accounts of the cold war, coming right from the Russian's mouths. A Submarine, bearing nuclear missles is sent to rest off the coast of New England. K-19, dubbed "The Widowmaker" because of its consistently bad problems, deaths in the crew, etc.
Hollywood, once again, takes an old story and shoves it in a different setting. Wooptie-doo!
Remember Apollo 13? Remember how it was "cursed"? Remember how it was just an accident, after an accident, after an accident, and how the accidents are solved are the only thing that truly drove the story along?

Now here we have K-19. A sub that was doomed from the start. We knew the Titanic-style ending here. And I, personally was left feeling very bummed out. Many crewmembers died.. for what? Each other.. but for what? A stupid test rocket in the middle of the arctic? Are we supposed to believe that this is an honorable thing? Perhaps we do such tests ourselves, but I don't think it's a valuable and inspiring tale for Hollywood to tell. I found the whole thing rather depressing.
Not to mention that the whole Cold War nuclear sub thing has been done to death. In fact.. NO MORE SUB MOVIES! There's really not much to do in here.. dive.. have drills... dive.. raise the ship.. have another drill. I felt it to be a whole movie about Gene Hackman (AKA Crimson Tide) having bad drills all over again. The message was given to us the first time. We don't need too see one bad drill after another. I almost expected to see a "montage" scene of the crew in training on the sub while Ford wins over the crew's morale. Pretty lame.
Well, Ford and Neeson were in top form here. If it wasn't for these people the film would be dead in the water.
In fact, we wouldn't have a movie. And nobody would have gone to see it as it gets washed up on our coastline and flushed down our toilets.
Another "big-event" movie sinks.

Here we go.. with a whopping *****/*****
Half way up the scale for good acting.