Titanic's Achilles Heel (2007)
*** (out of 4)
Good, if familiar, documentary has divers John Chatterton and Richard Kohler trying to determine if Titanic actually broke apart much sooner than people had originally believed. In order to prove their theory they visit the site of the Titanic to try and discover if a design flaw did more damage to the ship and if it was just a disaster waiting to happen. In order to get a better clue, the diver's locate Titanic's sister ship and try to learn if it contained the same flaw. Overall this is a good documentary on the subject as we get a lot of great footage from the ocean floor of not only Titanic but also Britannic. No matter how many times you see these ships at the bottom of the ocean it's still quite chilling and especially with this newer footage that really gives you a crystal clear image. What works the best in this documentary is the stuff dealing with the design flaw as experts try to determine if perhaps the ship would have eventually been in danger even if it hadn't hit the iceberg. What doesn't work as well is all the back story to the event as well as a large amount of the running time going towards the U.S. investigation after the ship went down. Countless documentaries have gone over this part of the story so I'm not sure why it was so important to go over it again.
