Danger en haute mer

Well I lasted 3 minutes of this movie. After seeing the crew were wearing RN dauphins NOT USN ones. I realized further watching would only be more frustrating trying to pretend it wasn't a SciFi movie. Anyone who thinks was "authentic" has never had any contact with the USN or seen ANYTHING about the USN submarine service. It's too bad because there are some good actors. No excuse for this F up though.

It wasn't bad for about the first half but it got so completely ridiculous I had to bail. The inciting incident is pretty ballsy for a TV film.

But would a sub's Captain and XO really go out on the sail to see it a nuke exploded a couple miles away? And as dumb as that was, would they really develop strong radiation sickness so quickly? And the captain is given a shot of iodine because of radiation acute radiation sickness and five minutes later he is fine. That's Star Trek medicine, not reality, unless that iodine was laced with amphetamines.

Could an American navy sub really have so many scheming nutters on board? That would be rather terrifying.

There are comparisons to Crimson Tide, but to some degree, submarine movies tend to be very similar because of the nature of subs. And there was a famous Soviet sub incident in the Cuban Missile Crisis where the officers differed sharply on whether to use a nuclear torpedo.

The great thing about Crimson Tide was both sides had a fairly plausible argument. Though, granted, at least to my civilian understanding, the captain there could not relieve the XO for refusing to launch regardless of the XO's reasoning. That's the whole point of the two man rule.

But it all seemed somewhat reasonable. In this film, you have scheming nutters and officers easily swayed by nutters. And one of the nutters believes the USSR still exists. Silly silly silly. Also, the stakes here are much less than those in Crimson Tide. If indeed WWIII has broken out, they are just one boat of many others, in addition to all the other nukes in the US arsenal. They are in most practical terms pretty much irrelevant.

A sorry copy of "Crimson Tide" in my opinion. As each part of the film developed I just new what was going to happen next. Casper Van Dein has not been in anything nearly as good as "Starship Troopers" and it pains me to see him in this. The acting is wooden, the story predicable, give it a miss.

Dave

Crimson Tide did it better.Conflict aboard an American submarine which loses contact with the rest of the world owing to a nuclear accident in North Korea.Skipper Caspar Van Diem urges caution,gung-ho second in command Shane Daley leads mutiny.Teeth are gritted,jaws are tightened ,testosterone pumps,cliches abound and after too long an interval the credits roll Makes Sub Down look good Pity because I rate Van Diem a lot but he seems stuck in TV and DTV purgatory

As a submariner, I have become accustomed to ignoring the technical inaccuracies in submarine movies. It would be impossible to watch them if I let those mistakes bother me. This move was different. Rather than ignoring the inaccuracies, I tried with dogged determination to find one thing that was accurate. From both the Captain and Executive Officer wearing Command at Sea pins above the right pocket, to the unrecognizable Submarine Qualification pins , to the fact hat every Petty Officer on the pier at the submarine base was an aviation rating, to the wrong people barfing out information they couldn't possibly have, to the "you can find me by the radio console" etc. Etc. Etc. The pep talk from the chief to the new sailors was ridiculous. His prediction that two thirds of them won't qualify for a rating and that half of them won't earn their Dolphins is some kind of "elite fighting force" bs that doesn't apply to subs where nearly everyone qualifies. Not one thing was realistic except for the Los Angeles class boat that was featured in the ship's external scenes. The problem is that it is the wrong class boat. Strategic nuclear weapons aren't carried aboard an attack sub. Nope. Not one thing about this movie was even close to realistic.

I could overlook Gene Hackman calling the Chief of the Boat "Mister Cobb" in Crimson Tide. I could forgive Scott Glenn for leaving his billion dollar nuclear submarine to join a boarding party (something no ship captain other than Kirk or Picard would ever do) in Red October.

But this one doesn't just do a lot of things wrong. It doesn't do a single thing right.