Not quite as taut a movie as "Das Boot", but my favorite submarine movie next to that one.

Rating: Null/10 (24 July 2002)

Trying to keep up in the arms race, the Soviet Union hastily launches its first nuclear sub on a mission to fire a test ballistic missile, thus demonstrating its own cutting edge capabilities to the Americans. Haste, however, makes waste, and, that demonstration's having been achieved, one of the on board reactors springs a leak and overheats, threatening an explosion bigger than that at Hiroshima.
Prior to launch, the boat's captain, Mikhail Polenin (Liam Neeson), is bounced down to executive officer. He sees himself as a father figure with respect to those under his command, and sees them as his family. The powers that be figure he needs to be replaced as captain by someone with a more demanding management style, namely one Alexi Vostrikov (Harrison Ford). Vostrikov drives Polenin's "family" mercilessly, welding them into a "crew". Unfortunately, he was a much better welder than those who built the boat.

A submarine movie is guaranteed drama, so it all becomes a matter of execution, and director Kathryn Bigelow keeps our attention submerged in the action for--whoa!--two hours and eighteen minutes. That's ok, it moves right along. Some of the dialogue gets a little sententious, but hey, these are Russian Commies, so you have to expect that.
The boat (they call submarines "boats", because they're not built to ship things--otherwise, they'd be called "ships") was doomed right from the laying of the keel (so maybe they don't have keels...you know what I mean). Several workers lost their lives during its construction, and the champagne bottle didn't break at the Christening (or whatever Communists do to boats on their maiden voyage). Personally, I myself even felt a little nervous on seeing that the bow appeared to be reinforced with Duct Tape, so I can imagine how the crew--er, family--felt when initially heading down the hatch, so to speak. The K-19 promised to be a K-9.
Actually, she was built pretty well, except for some pipe welds in reactor three. And her design had leap-frogged that of the Americans, who at that time had basically put reactors in converted conventional subs. The real problem was that haste and a little too much of that Russian "can do" attitude had put her out to sea ill-equipped. No backup systems for the reactors and, worse, no radiation resistant suits. Instead, she had been outfitted with protective suits designed for working around dangerous chemicals, little comfort when you're trying to weld the holes shut in a live runaway nuclear reactor.
All in all, a gripping drama. Well cast--Ford and Neeson play well off of each other, and Peter Sarsgaard ("Boys Don't Cry", "Another Day in Paradise") adds another solid performance to his resumé. Director Bigelow keeps it light enough on the Russian accents so as not to be distracting. Not quite as taut a movie as "Das Boot", but my favorite submarine movie next to that one. And it reveals, finally and definitively, why the Soviet Union lost the Cold War. They spent way-y-y- too much on their uniforms.