Coastal View News
I tend not to like
submarine movies. They just remind me that stressfulness and boredom are not
mutually exclusive. Yeah, all those depth charges, red flashing lights, sweaty
faces, and steam are plenty stressful. But, my goodness, they can be pretty
dull. It’s like a slow, constant drip of water on your skin: both monotonous and torture.
I would not call “Black
Sea” torture, though. It’s not a day in the park either, nor is it a quiet
evening in, or even a swashbuckling adventure. It is predictably watchable.
“Black Sea” makes sure to
remind you of the darker, and perhaps more intriguing, days of submarining—the
Cold War, in particular, but also some of the Nazi U-Boats and WWII. But this
movie is not really about all that. It is about Captain Robinson (Jude Law),
who is a present-day submarine captain working for a corporation that, you
know, needs submarines. That is, until he gets laid off. After all, who really
needs submarines these days?
Robinson is pissed and
doesn’t know what to do. He dedicated his whole life to submarining—and even
sacrificed relationships with his son and former wife—and doesn’t really have
anything to fall back on
But then a friend—also an
out-of-sorts ex-submariner—tells him about this really hush-hush, really
dangerous, certainly very illegal, opportunity. He tells Robinson that once
upon a time the Soviets made a deal with the Nazis that involved shipping (via
submarine) tens of millions of dollars in solid gold back over to the Third
Reich. But on the way back through the Black Sea, the gold-laden submarine
crashed. Either everyone forgot about the submarine—kinda a lot going on back
then—or else they could not get to it, because, according to Robinson’s friend,
the submarine is still there.
So of course what could be
better for out-of-work sailors than to go on a treasure hunt? So that’s just
what they do. They get their hands on an old Soviet sub, assemble a half-Russian,
half-British crew, and set sail for the wreck.
The good-hearted,
magnanimous Robinson tells his crew that, after paying their backers, they are
going to split the treasure evenly between them. Jackpot! Right? Well, the
problem is, the divers start to think, “Why does that there cook get as much as
me?” And the beastly Russian engine-room worker thinks, “Well if one of these
Brits happens to die on the job, there is more for the rest of us.” In other
words, discontent is sown.
And of course it only gets
worse, because, as we all know, a ride on a submarine is never smooth—whether
it is a power failure, sinking below crush depth, enemy torpedoes and depth
charges (which, mercifully, do not make an appearance in this film), or just
those random yet seemingly ubiquitous hull breaches, something must go awry. I’m
pretty sure Murphy Law’s was made with submarining in mind.
All that is to say, “Black
Sea” has plenty of the stress and tension you would expect from a submarine
movie. You really do feel like it
would absolutely definitely suck to be on a submarine when something goes
wrong. And I, at least, had the opportunity to once again thank my lucky stars
that I am a landlubber.
But, for all its
heart-pounding, stress-inducing drama, “Black Sea” remains strikingly
conventional. This or that particular scene may not be predictable, but the
movie as a whole sure is. Jude Law and the rest of the cast do an admirable job
bringing the amusing (albeit contrived) story to life. But all the plot points
just feel too familiar.
So yes, you will still
feel the stress, just like you will still feel a punch in the gut even if you
know it (or something like it) is coming. But whereas a punch in the gut always
feels pretty fresh—it never gets old, if you know what I mean—“Black Sea” does
feel somewhat stale.
