Hey folks, Harry here... While in CineVegas I talked with a pair of folks that really dug K-19, and while the word has been mixed on the early reviews, I think a lot of that is going to boil down on the viewer's ability to accept an accent coming out of such a familiar actor. Sometimes this grates on certain viewers to the point that they can not enjoy themselves because they know... "______ doesn't sound like that!" I am looking forward to seeing the film though, I keep rooting for Bigelow to really nail a movie perfectly. Here's Lampbane...
Thursday night I was fortunate enough to have tickets to a preview screening of K-19: The Widowmaker. So after an hour of waiting were were let into the theater, only to be told (along with all the other "norms") that the entire back of the theater was taken, but hey, we had our choice of any seat in the first three rows!
So I will openly admit that my judgment could have been biased had this movie reveled in fast, jerky camera movement. But it didn't, totally not what I expected. And I suppose that's what I can say about the entire film: totally unexpected.
The film tells the story of the USSR's first nuclear ballistic submarine, built in response to America stationing the same in the Atlantic. After all, it is the middle of the Cold War. Liam Neeson is the captain, the men love him, but the government isn't too crazy about him, since he (gasp!) cares more about the welfare of his men than the public image of Mother Russia. The government's cutting corners to get their secret weapon done ASAP, and he's not entirely happy with that. So they demote him to first officer, placing the sub under the command of an officer more willing to tow the party line (Harrison Ford).
Thus commences a battle of wills between Neeson's character, who merely wants to inspire confidence and engender warm fuzzy feelings with the crew, and Ford, who wants to prove what a cold, unrelenting badass he is.
Soon enough the reactor malfunctions and begins to heat up, putting the sub and its crew on the edge of destruction and horrible, horrible death. Radiation poisoning isn't pretty, and especially painful here once you realize that none of this would be happening if not for the rushed-cutting-corner mentality of the Russian government. But you won't hear a word of complaint about the government here. One things start to go downhill, the movie is loaded with lots of words and speech about honor and duty and not surrendering to those filthy Americans.
I was on the edge of screaming, "Surrender to the Americans, you communist f*cks!!! At least your skin will stop melting off (I hope)!!!"
Sometimes frustration can really get you into the movie. I figured it wasn't going to end well, I just didn't know when or how. The movie constantly keeps you on the edge, presenting a problem that certainly looks to be the end of our plucky little Soviets, resolving it, only to make it worse and more depressing. What this ended up doing to me is making me extremely tense. It also kept the film from being extremely predictable.
That's always the trap of these sorts of movies, you figure the ending will suck and thus don't bother to watch it. I assure everyone reading this that despite all the screaming horror present in this film, it doesn't end on an entirely depressing note. Not that it's sunshine and daisys, and my boyfriend still found it depressing, but I left the theater with a satisfied feeling, and further assured in my decision to never ever, ever join the military.
~ Lampbane
Breaker of Lamps, Destroyer of Vases
