Nuclear Alert

'Crash Dive' goes the way of a great many other B action movies, only this one is worse in many regards. Of course that's what appeals to fans of the genre, and if you look at it that way, it won't disappoint. The special effects, especially the climactic missile destruction have to be seen to be believed. They are so bad you end up laughing at them, ruining any intended entertainment value that the movie has to offer.

The acting is classically bad, not at all aided by a horrible script. Michael Dudikoff is laughable, they producers could've (and should've) hired a bum off the street to play his character, it would've worked out much better. The rest of the cast, made up entirely out of no names, fares no better, and they appear to have so little interest in the story that they showed up for work, and left, still sleeping.

There is one thing that is to be admired in this film is it's ambitions. Never before have I seen a B action movie that actually has any moments of.... sadness, so to speak. 'Crash Dive' does have some of that and, though it miserably fails, it is a refreshing break from the norm. Well maybe not refreshing, but a break all the same.

One of the qualities required in any B movie is unintentional entertainment value. 'Crash Dive' certainly has some of that, but the stretches in between the fits of badness is what is not very enjoyable. There are portions that are unimaginably tedious, and that's the reason I'm not going to recommend the movie, even for fans of Dudikoff, if any exist. Stay away. Stay far, far away.

2.5/10

This was a really bad movie. It uses every cliché ever known to man, the 'romance' was even less unbelievable than most bad movies, and it was completely militarily inaccurate. Case in point: Catherine Bell's character Lt. Cmdr Lisa Starks was referred to as "Lieutenant" by all other characters. And she answered the phone with "Lieutenant Stark". Uh hello. A Lt. Cmdr is always addressed as "Commander." You'd think that even without any sort of original story line that they would have at least tried to get the technical details right Don't bother seeing this one. U-571 is much better. And Stealth is much more entertaining even if its kinda cliché too.

This non-entity of a movie doesn't deserve a long review, so here are my brief thoughts. You will have seen every single element of this movie done better elsewhere. It is Die Hard and Under Siege on a submarine, yet so much worse than any of the films in either series. It is utterly predictable and totally unmemorable apart from the single worst shootout I have ever seen in a movie. This shootout manages to be completely mesmerising due to the total lack of jeopardy and the catastrophic editing. It is staggeringly poorly done, however, for this hilariously bad sequence I have added an extra star.

This movie was by far the worst Techno-thriller type movie I have ever seen, I suffered through the entire movie to see who was the brave soul that allowed his/her name to be attached to the technical adviser's slot and who the continuity director was. Now I know that everyone is not an accuracy nut like I am, but having been in the navy, it would be nice to have the film stay in the ball park. The hardest thing about this film to believe is the fact that of the 90 minutes that it ran, 45 of it was re-hashed from other movies, and the majority of those 45 minutes were from "Crimson Tide." I guess sampling is alive and well in the movie industry as well.

I saw an episode of Good Witch and was looking up Catherine Bell and saw she was in this. Ironically I don't even remember her appearing in this mess. Pretty sure she wasn't even on the sub, despite the billing.

This was a bad movie. The technical flaws were obvious even to a civilian who never served on a missile boat. And that wasn't even the worst part. The story was written by Xerox Machine from Under Siege.

In Under Siege we had ex-SEAL Segal putting down the Slim Jim's long enough to defeat bad guys headed by Tommy Lee Jones who took over a battleship. This had ex-SEAL Dudekoff putting down his daughter long enough to defeat bad guys consisting of D-listers with Russian accents. Dudekoff is no Segal, which is bigger insult than it sounds, and his acting was on the order of the tension created by whether he would make it back in time for his daughter's piano recital.

This movie had everything I hate about one-man-army action movies. The bad guys killed ten times their number in good guys before they're finally stopped by our hero. It's great that they're eventually stopped, sure, but I'd prefer my fictional hero to prevent further loss of life from the moment he enters the fray. A one-man-army cartoon character who is continually outsmarted and outmaneuvered while more people die is just another James Bond. Been there, done that.