A Reproach to the Soviet System, not a Vindication of it

Rating: 7/10 (5 April 2006)

Throughout his career Harrison Ford has tended to play heroes rather than villains, a notable exception being the adulterous, murderous husband in "What Lies Beneath". This was his first film after that one, and for much of the film he seems to be continuing his attempt to broaden his range by playing unsympathetic characters. It is set on board K19, the Soviet Union's first nuclear powered submarine, in 1961, during the Cold War. Ford plays its commander, Captain Alexei Vostrikov, given the position after his predecessor, Mikhail Polenin, was demoted for putting the safety of his crew before the interests of the Communist Party. Polenin remains on board as second-in-command, making for a tense and difficult relationship between the two.
Vostrikov suffers from two disadvantages. The Soviet authorities do not entirely trust him because his father was regarded as politically unreliable and ended his days in a gulag. The crew, still in their hearts loyal to Polenin, do not trust Vostrikov either, partly because he is a strict disciplinarian and partly because rumour has it that he only got the job because of family connections to a Politburo member. The ship is ordered to sail under the Arctic ice-cap to test-fire a missile, then to go on patrol off the East Coast of America. Disaster strikes when the nuclear reactor malfunctions; although the fault is repaired, the crew are exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. Vostrikov refuses assistance from a passing American destroyer, but as radiation levels continue to increase, many of the crew become convinced that their only chance is to make for the NATO base on Jan Mayen Island or to abandon ship and accept the destroyer's help. Vostrikov indignantly refuses to consider any action that would involve handing his ship over to Russia's enemies and insists that they should attempt to return to base. Even the political officer, charged with maintaining ideological purity, wants to turn the submarine over to the Americans and attempts to lead a mutiny against Vostrikov. Polenin must now decide where his loyalties lie.
Previously, Vostrikov has seemed a fanatical nationalist, more concerned with ostentatiously demonstrating his loyalty to the Party than with the safety of his crew. There has, however, been one small clue which suggests that he is far from being a loyal Communist. When his men are trying to repair the damaged reactor, he wishes them "God be with you!" In an American or British ship such a remark would have been a banal commonplace; in the radically atheistic Soviet Union, any mention of God was a subversive political comment. It is at this point that we learn the real reasons why he does not want to abandon his ship; if he does, the reactor may explode, destroying not only the American ship but also the NATO base, leading to a risk of American retaliation and of nuclear war between the superpowers.
Vostrikov therefore turns out to be a typical Harrison Ford character after all, a man of great courage and determination trying to do the right thing and to prevent disaster. The film has many similarities with another submarine drama from a few years earlier, "The Crimson Tide". That film was set on board an American vessel rather than a Russian one, but it also had at its heart a conflict of personalities between a conservative captain and a liberal second-in-command, and also featured an attempted mutiny. Both films made good use of the enclosed, claustrophobic atmosphere of a submarine. In both cases there are very good performances from two contrasting actors playing the two contrasting officers. In the earlier film Gene Hackman played the pugnacious, explosive Captain Ramsey and Denzel Washington the calmer, more thoughtful Lieutenant-Commander Hunter. Here it is Liam Neeson's more liberal Polenin who is also the more emotional of the two; Vostrikov, like many Ford characters, is played with a calm, solid imperturbability.
This is not, as some have claimed, a pro-Communist movie. (Trying to make pro-Soviet propaganda in 2002, ten years after the Soviet Union collapsed, would have been a forlorn hope indeed). Certainly, it is unlikely that such a film would have been made during the Cold War itself, when anything showing Russian sailors in a heroic light would not have been well received in America (or, for that matter, in many Western European countries). Today, however, we are able to look at the events of the Cold War in a more objective, historical way.
One of the things that has now become clear about the period is what a ramshackle, disorganised place Soviet Russia was, although at the time this view would have been fiercely contested not only by the Left, which clung to the illusion that it was a workers' paradise, but also by the Right, which clung equally firmly to its belief that it was a ruthlessly efficient and disciplined state. Although Khrushchev introduced a partial internal liberalisation after Stalin's death, internationally his regime was still obsessed, for reasons of pride and ideological zeal, with matching and even exceeding America's defence spending, even though the Soviet economy was only a small fraction of the size of the American one. The sailors in this film are victims of that obsession and of a government that values its own prestige more highly than their lives. In order to fulfil that government's dream of possessing its own nuclear submarine force, they are sent to sea in a hastily-built, badly designed vessel with an unsafe reactor, without even protective suits against the dangers of radiation. Their courage and self-sacrifice stand as a reproach to the Soviet system, not as a vindication of it. 7/10