Horror Show

Rating: Null/10 (24 July 2002)

What a shame Summertime movie audiences didn't beat the heat with this thriller chiller from Paramount. K-19, The Widowmaker came in behind overall weak box office numbers on it's opening weekend after the Stuart Little Sequel, the Road to Perdition and MIB.
OK, the title didn't help. No, it's not about a death climb on Everest or nearby peaks. And it's not about skateboards either. It's a submarine movie and a really good one too. Like the great grand pappy of all sub flicks, Run Silent Run Deep, you've got a handsome young captain who loves his crew and they love him and a grizzled new older captain who loves no one. Drill, drill, drill, dangerous mission. In the Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster roles you have Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson respectively.
The only drawback here is that these guys are just too darn good-looking to be Russians. And no Don Rickles either, pussycat. No comic relief anywhere. You see, these guys are Commies and it's 1961, the height of the cold war insanity. If you weren't around at the time, we were four minutes to midnight at any given moment. As in, ka-boom, it's all over now, baby blue. And the 'Inspired by true events' disclaimer at the beginning means here's another example of just how close we came to the last scene in the original Plant of the Apes.
Harrison and Neeson are everything but hateful and God-less. This is a soulful story about comrades and sacrifice being swept under the rug. The bad guys are the politicians and the military beauacracy. Sound familiar? These guys are closer to the TV David Hedison/Richard Basehart team that we all came to love on those pre-Sixty Minutes Sunday nights.
With a soulful musical score by real Russians, you can smell the borscht. You even see the borscht in a shot of the galley. They ate pretty good in the Russian Navy. And those uniforms! Like Joan Rivers says, 'if you don't want gays in the military, stop making the uniforms so cute." Where can I get one of the striped tee's?
This film's look and movement is meticulous thanks to a master film editor, Walter Murch and a great new second generation cinematographer, Jeff Cronenweth, who's dad, Jordan, cut his teeth on In Cold Blood. Not bad credentials at all. The ship has the realistic, very-un-slick look of cold war communism and comes off looking all Jules Verne-y with the austere wood interiors. They did their homework and they got it right.
And a woman director, Kathryn Bigelow? Horror-show, baby, horror-show.