Le vaisseau fantôme

David Jason was magnificent in this movie. forget the press comments ( the one I read was written by an egotistical maniac - unfortunately , most critics are of the same mold). This was a very watchable movie , being in two parts , I made a point of watching the second part ( what further proof do you need , none for me - my wife watched all of it as well!) . Well chosen David , for a dramatic role , out of the tried and tested. You convinced me. I didn't want to laugh at any stage ( now that's a challenge). You will have to ditch the cockney accent though . I look forward to your next role - surprise us all , with a complete change of diction! Any way , well done. I love you. Jerome

A derivative but nonetheless intriguing set up; a ship (in this case a submarine) is found many years after it sank, with no sign of the crew, or what happened to them. This has been done many times, it is essentially the story of the Marie Celeste. Despite that the set up hooked me, I love these kind of vaguely supernatural / time travel plot lines, however familiar they are.

To be honest I was disappointed by what was delivered. David Jason is a fine actor but his character in this came over as terse, sullen and not especially interesting. As he is the lead, and therefore your focal point throughout the story, this was a big failing. He just wasn't interesting or unusual enough, you learned almost nothing about his character despite him being on screen for most of the 180 minutes.

The plot itself seemed to peter out rather than deliver a climax, for a thriller (or at least a war time drama) I felt there was too little tension. The actual operation of the submarine and the technical side all felt very authentic but this did not compensate for the lack of plot, or genuinely interesting characters. The officers were all a little stiff, the crew were similarly generic, all of them have been seen many times before.

Towards the end I felt the plot simply ran out of ideas and some of what happened bordered on silly. The story seemed to flirt with the premise it had created, rather than really go into it. I never felt this story got going, I appreciate it was television but there was far too much chatter. It was slow in places where it needed pace, or another twist and this was, for me at least, the other major failing; ultimately the story lacked imagination. What Ghostboat delivered was almost exactly what you expected, no more. There was no moment when I thought 'now that is interesting, I never saw that coming'.

Despite these misgivings I thought it was not bad for a TV two parter. It was ambitious and though it failed to hit the target it was at the very least something different.

David Jason is brilliant. Sadly a good actor cannot salvage an obvious story line (which owes a lot to other works, such as the similarly named Ghostship) which meant it all became a little predictable, and towards the end just plain silly.

Characters behave inconsistently and illogically as the story lurches towards the less than surprising end.

The special effects themselves were also erratic - obviously a lot of money was spent on the set of the sub, but the cgi shots ranged from the okay to dreadful.

Okay if you are bored, but not the great work I was expecting.

A story like this will not appeal to everyone but I thought it was very original and well put together overall. A good change from the usual period dramas that come from British productions. There were some bits that could have been better with regards to acting and script but it was still entertaining. Some story points are a bit too subtle and easy to miss so might need a second viewing to fully appreciate how it all fits together. The ending was quite bold and strong which I didn't expect. The visual effects were good for a relatively low budget production and there was quite a lot of computer graphics that looked as good as from a feature film.

I just finished watching this ITV production, and all I can say is that I liked what I saw, but will note that there was room for much improvement.

How so? Well, for one, the main vessel around which the movie focuses was a World War 2 British diesel submarine. Big deal, you say, ah, but one of the major story points is that the sub seems to operate like a modern nuclear sub, or one of the modern Nordic or Germanic subs which are quieter than either the US, UK or Soviet subs. Simply put WW2 subs stayed on the surface, and only went underwater when needed, but you'd never know that by watching this movie.

The other thing is that there's a little bit of creep factor in this film, but it's not accentuated enough. We understand what's happening to the crew, but the made for TV production values seem to limit both SFX and other production values to really ram home the message to the audience.

I imagine the biggest mis step taken in this film is that even though the boat as a "life of its own" so to speak, a late 20th century crew, a crew that is not trained in diesel sub operations some how manages to bring this vessel out into open ocean, and operate her like a modern nuclear powered SSN.

Huh.

You know, if you can get by that, and the cinematography which is a little uninspired, then you can probably enjoy watching this film, but the story of a haunted ship and her affect on the crew takes precedence over operational details and plot points.

It's not a great film, but it is a mild diversion for a couple of hours. Give it a shot.