K-19: The Widowmaker Reviews

Recently, Kathryn Bigelow has made one of the most impressive come-backs with ‘The Hurt Locker’ and ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ but her career was not in a really great shape before that. Indeed, 6 years before ‘The Hurt Locker’ was released, she made this flick which was pretty much a flop at the box-office. Personally, I always had a weak spot for thrillers involving submarines and this one was actually rather well made and fairly entertaining. Still, pretty much like ‘The Hunt for Red October’, I was really annoyed by the fact that some American and English actors portrayed those Soviet soldiers and officers. Of course, I understand that it would be difficult to attract a mainstream audience with a movie starring some unknown Russian actors speaking Russian all the time but it would definitely make it more convincing. At least, I have to admit it, Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson gave as usual some solid performances. Concerning the plot, like I said before, it was fairly entertaining but you can feel that they made up a lot of stuff just to increase the dramatic impact. Still, to conclude, I thought it was a decent feature and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

Pretty routine, but the production values and Kathryn Bigelow’s smarts as a director go a long way towards making this thing watchable and maintaining our interest. The only thing of any particular note which is different and unique about K-19: The Widowmaker is that it places its focus on Russian characters in a story set during the Cold War.

That paranoia and fear of that era causes many decisions to be made which lead us to question the sanity of their thinking. If your submarine is leaking out radiation and potentially a threat to everyone aboard the vessel and the choice is between help from the Americans and death? I don’t know, perhaps growing up in a post-Cold War mentality has made be naïve about these kinds of decisions. Notice how I have yet to actually name A character, any one of them because there’s a lot to choose from. This is one of the many problems plaguing K-19, there’s a distinct lack of differentiation between the secondary characters – it’s very hard to keep track of which one is named which without some kind of cheat sheet. The film doesn’t know if it wants us to root for this large body of men who heroically go about doing a Herculean task of fixing the leaking radioactive core in only chemical suits, or the two sparring leads played by Liam Neeson and Harrison Ford. The two of them buttheads and eventually come to an agreement and appreciation of each other which is very obviously their trajectory as characters, yet the film still takes its sweet time getting to that point.

This lack of focus means that the film is episodic and bloated in structure. Too many diversions and ancillary characters, not enough of a strong grip has been used to tighten the plot points. Ford and Neeson are dramatically fine actors, but neither one of them can get a decent handle on their Russian accents. Roughly half the time Neeson’s natural Irish tones come rolling out, and Ford just can’t seem to keep it consistent or make it sound believable.

So it’s up to Bigelow to deliver her solidly cerebral approach to macho chest-pounding, and she does manage to create tension in numerous sequences and smartly finds ways to make such a confined space work in a filmic language. By the end, the submarine becomes less a ship and more of a metallic tomb which moves through the water. A little generic, sure, and definitely overly-long, but K-19 is a sufficient and solidly crafted genre film.