K-19 The Widowmaker.

[Neville]

In a few words: More an exercise of reverse psichology than a successful movie.

In detail: The main attractive the movie has (at least for me) is that for 2 hours and a half we are forced to look upon the western block (the movie is set during the cold war) from the Russian perspective. The western block is almost completely absent from the movie, and when it appears it is through o verbal references and a soviet propaganda movie. Those interested on the psichology of those who were our enemies during many decades will be pleased.

On the other hand, I have to say the script deals with some other interesting ideas, such as the sub journey being doomed by the start (that scene with the champagne bottle not breaking, or the sullen, sad departure) or the conflict between the two captains. Both Liam Neeson and Harrison Ford are excellent, but te truth is that their conflict, which could have been a good narrative line, is underused. And that takes me to the weakest point of the film: despite of Katryn Bigelow's ability, the different plot lines are so thin that stretching them to a film of this lenght is a mistake. The movie is boring at some stages, and others are incredibly stupid (take Liam Neeson speech before the top brass, for instance: if any soviet militar ever dared to speak like that, his next destiny would be the gulag). And the tone, wich makes this movie the most pesimistic and  depressing of the season certainly doesn't make things livelier.

[Dano]

Neville wrote:  Those interested on the psichology of those who were our enemies during many decades will be pleased.
*****  If I rent this movie, this will be the reason.  Another great - but very different - movie in this respect is "Citizen X" which depicts a Societ detective's struggle to capture a serial killer in a country that will not help him because it means acknowledging that a serial killer could exist in their country.  Stephen Rea is in it, great movie.