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We are in a plethora of war films now. Blackhawk Down (Josh Harnett), Hart's War (Bruce Willis), We Were Soldiers, (Mel Gibson) and Windtalkers (Nicholas Cage) have appeared in recent months. Now Harrison Ford with Liam Neeson square off as a Russian submarine captain and his executive officer with two ways of handling a crew under stress during the Cold War. Outside the perimeters of the sub lie NATO and the U.S. The world is watching this personality war.

K-19: The Widowmaker is based on a true 1961 incident with a Soviet top-secret nuclear sub. As the action opens, Neeson is demoted to executive officer because he is deemed soft on the crew and hard-liner Harrison Ford is brought on board as Captain. But both men realize the sub is not ready for sea. Workmanship is shoddy and equipment faulty. During the naming ceremony, the champagne bottle won't break which some consider a bad omen. Still, the order is given to go to sea and Ford obeys. It is one thing to order men into battle on a wide field of action, but quite another to be in the cramped quarters of a submarine when you are eyeball to eyeball with everyone and there is no place to run, especially when a meltdown of the nuclear core might happen with worldwide catastrophic consequences. 

Harrison Ford is quite good riding a fine line between villainy and good. When the radio goes down and no one is sure the sub hasn't defected to the West, his motives aren't clear to Moscow military (think Hunt for Red October here). Ford uses a soft voice and calculating expression to good effect. Just how far CAN he push the men? On the other hand, Liam Neeson is the amiable officer who puts the crew before anything. If he had his way, he's still be on the dock protesting faulty equipment. The many actors in the crew looked as though they strenuously rehearsed to become a working unit. The standout would be Peter Sarsgaard as Vadim, who is the replacement reactor officer, fresh from the Academy but not quite ready to face the nuclear fire. His own personal meltdown is something to behold. Christian Camargo as Pavel, who works with the reactor but is slow to realize a problem, is also good.

The underwater sequences are effective and so are the repair sections. Since the world knows there wasn't a meltdown, this is Hollywood's version of what might have happened and it is plausible. Who really knows? In some parts of the world, the Iron Curtain still exists. In the United States, we hear about heroes every day, but in the Soviet Union, heroes wait for recognition behind piles of bureaucratic dust.

Director Kathryn Bigelow has pulled off a big one here. The camera work inside the sub still has me claustrophobic, not to mention the great shots of the sub surfacing from under an ice pack or the grandeur of the open sea. 

Copyright 2002 Marie Asner
Submitted 6/23/02