K-19: WIDOWMAKER review

K-19: WIDOWMAKER is a shrug of a movie… A long stretch and yawn of a film. Literally all the action in the flick is comprised of… drills, practices and whatnot. There is only one sequence of genuine suspense in the entire film, but Leonard Nimoy did the scene much better in STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN.

There are fine performances throughout the film, but they don’t really have anything to do. Harrison Ford is fine as the Russian Captain, he didn’t really suck, but he understates nearly everything in the movie. Keeping a single emotional level of detachment throughout the film. Beyond knowing that he’s a career military man, whose father was a hero of the revolution, but died in the Gulag… We don’t know anything else about him.

That’s a problem with the entire film. This is one of those, “Just the Facts Ma’am” sort of flicks. Every character is cut from threadbare cloth… I mean there are no complications, no depth, no dimensions. These are just Russian Sailors on a Submarine, and I didn’t care more about any one of them over any other sailor on that ship.

We had the young freshly graduated inexperienced Nuclear Engineer with a beautiful wife – that’s all we get to know about him.

There’s an assistant of his in the Containment team that… Has a religious icon, and he isn’t supposed to. That’s all we get to know about him.

There’s a doctor that replaced another dead doctor, he doesn’t have the right medicine or training to deal with the situation. That’s all we get to know about him.

Liam Neeson’s captain was replaced by Ford, became the XO, believes a Sub team is a family with the Captain being the Father. That’s all we get to know about him.

There was the Chief Engineer, he gets the job done.

There’s some guy with a moustache on the bridge of the ship – He feels Neeson will always be the Captain and says so at least 5 times in the movie – oh and that’s all we learn about him.

There’s a guy with a pet mouse – that’s all we get to know about him.

There is the political officer – He doesn’t like being on a submarine, but likes being part of history, but that’s all we get to know about him.

Overall, that’s the cast of the film. They just don’t have any real depth. Now, I suppose the ‘situation’ that occurs was supposed to give them all depth, but frankly… We’re told 4 times or more that they were all heroes, that’s the new depth they have.

As for the ‘situation’, they’re on a nuclear submarine and it shipped out too early and wasn’t adequately checked out. As a result, shit happens. In a lot of ways the K-19 Sub reminded me of my own car, and to underline that, when I left the theater, the back passenger side tire was flat, as we pumped fix-a-flat into it to 'make it to the fill-up station' the tension on the drive was unbearable. Oh the drama, the humanity... Just like in K-19 only... with out the Nuclear Radiation thing, but basically that's the story, just add atomic power to it.

The most intriguing thing in the entire film came out of Liam Neeson’s mouth. He has a scene in a really lame pre-shipping celebration soiree where he tells the command staff that he’s heard that there was a cosmonaut that went up before Yuri Gagarin and this man wasn’t loyal enough to hold his breath when the oxygen malfunctioned, so as a result he never existed and Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space. Yuri was lucky, and he states that he hopes all of them are lucky as well.

Now, that’s a fairly bold barroom story. Is there any evidence that there was a cosmonaut that got sent up before Yuri Gagarin, but died in space? I’m genuinely intrigued by the concept.

There was one other scene that intrigued me, which was the political officer’s demonstration of why the United States was an evil place. Unfortunately, while in the middle of the scene they called like the 20th Drill of the film, so we didn’t really get to see all that, but I was fascinated to watch that sequence, but like anything else that was truly interesting or character building… they had to cut to ANOTHER DRILL. Because well the men must be ready in case we end up in war, and I respect that, but must we show ALL THE DRILLS, and do we really need to cut very very quickly through them, with as much clangy noises as we can muster and an overbearing score pounding out… THIS COULD BE IMPORTANT over and over and over and over again?

This isn’t a bad movie, in fact it is about as intriguing as the lesser documentaries on the HISTORY CHANNEL, I like those, btw. This film reminds me quite a bit of another movie that was just sort of… unnecessary. THE NEWTON BOYS by Richard Linklater.

I kinda liked THE NEWTON BOYS the same sort of half-hearted way I liked K-19: WIDOWMAKER. Both films had fine casts, wonderful filmmakers, were based on true but little known incidents in history. HOWEVER, both stories were decidedly non-cinematic. Both stories are about things that didn’t happen.

Everybody didn’t die. The submarine didn’t explode in a nuclear blast several times the power of Hiroshima, thus starting World War 3. This is a film about what didn’t happen, and why it didn’t happen, and if things had gone differently, we could all be glowing in the dark, but it didn’t happen.

This would be like the story of one of the giant cruise ships that went from England to America around the turn of the century, but DIDN’T HIT THE ICEBERG, but maybe it had a fire in the hold and about 9 people died amongst the black gangs beneath, but due to the amazing efforts of the control team, the blaze didn’t consume the vessel and the passengers managed to live their lives to completion.

Like I said, this is a ‘shrug’ movie. One of those that ya could have lived without, one that feels like it is going through the motions with people far too talented to be making this story come to life. I do mean it when I say these are talented people, and you can see every effort being put into attempting to resuscitate this film and to infuse it with life… But the kites didn’t catch the lightning… The body wasn’t sewn together just right, and the fates were such that it just didn’t come together. The history wasn’t there. The story wasn’t there.

This is the first of the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC films, personally I hope this has moderate success because I want to see their Shackleton movie come to life, because unlike this story… THAT IS AN AMAZINGLY COMPELLING STORY! That is epic adventure from the real world of our history.

However, they really must make sure that the stories they try to transform into films are in fact stories that lend themselves to being compelling cinema. This is just one of those… “Ehhh” movies. I didn’t want them to change anything, because… well it’s history and it is kinda interesting. It is just non-cinematic history frankly, that wasn’t interesting… enough. Oh well.