Sam Sloan
The big big holes happened when the two divers found the gold and the drive shaft inside the derelict German submarine. Pulling and removing a drive shaft would have been a pretty big job if they had just had that to do, but they chose to deal with it by not bothering to show how they were supposed to do it and instead giving the impression it was such an easy job, it wasn't worth even showing it - hey, they found it and now they see it, now it's done! And the other big hole was all that gold they found within that submarine weighing two tons! Again, it would have been a pretty big job just moving all that gold to where they would be able to get it through the submarine beside the same place and way they got into the submarine to begin with - beside the pressure lock obviously. And there, they would have had to hand carry bars of gold into the pressure lock, fill it with seawater, carry the bars and then place them onto some cart which appears out of nowhere somewhere outside the submarine onto the seabed floor. It would have taken a whole lot of work, a lot of time, maybe a few days and a lot of trips with all those bars weighing a total of two tons! Where did they get all that oxygen? And then they would have - or rather the eighteen year old kid would have had a lot of work on his hands getting the gold into the salvage submarine, because the other guy was killed when he fell off the edge into a deep canyon. And the kid was not portrayed as much an expert diver to begin with. And where did that winch come from? If any of this was possible, before even attempting what they were planning to do, there would have been a scene where a few of them stand over a table making sketches and calculations about how they were going to even attempt a big job like this. But I suspect the makers of this movie nixed such a scene as that because of the impossibility of such a job to begin with and decided to just leave it up the viewers imagination which is the only way to do such a job as that - in one's imagination. But the movie was entertaining even though it lacked credibility.
maccas75
A bunch of unemployed sailors head off on a submarine adventure to find a Nazi U-boat rumoured to be laden with gold. That sounded awesome to me. Then in 2015, the potential "discovery" of a Nazi Gold Train, buried in Poland, ignited my imagination and reminded me of this movie. As a result, I simply had to see Black Sea and satisfy my inner Indiana Jones! The first thing you'll probably notice is Jude Law's thick Scottish accent - he pulls it off surprisingly well. The movie plods along like a by-the-numbers action flick, possessing the same level of intelligence often shown in said films. Law's performance commands attention, much like his commanding of the rusty old sub itself.The Russian stereotypes just become tiresome after awhile. It would've been nice for this movie to rise above "the Russian Hollywood bad guy" portrayal just once. The different countries represented by those on board create some interesting dynamics on board the ship which provide some of the "action". Ben Mendelsohn seems born for these kind of roles and he excels as the unpredictable lunatic, Fraser. It's his character (and his strong performance) which often drives Black Sea.Black Sea succeeds in creating the claustrophobic atmosphere of submarine life; but this has already been achieved in countless other submarine films. Ultimately, it fails at making us connect with the characters and truly stress over their predicaments and outcomes. Inevitably, my interest began to sink much like the battered old subs themselves.
robert-temple-1
There have been many submarine films in the past, but the genre seemed to have died out, until this one appeared. The two most famous submarine films ever made were DAS BOOT (1981, 293 minutes long in the original uncut version) and ON THE BEACH (1959, see my review). In the latter film, the submarine was incidental to the story but much of the time was spent in it. Of the many wartime submarine dramas of earlier years, I remember UP PERISCOPE (1959, with James Garner), SUBMARINE COMMAND (1951, with William Holden), and others the titles of which I have forgotten. Others include MYSTERY SUBMARINE (1963), SUBMARINE D-1 (1937), John Ford's SUBMARINE PATROL (1938), S.O.S. SUBMARINE (1941), SUBMARINE SEAHAWK (1958), SUBMARINE ALERT (1943), SUBMARINE BASE (1943), SUBMARINE WARFARE (1946), PIRATE SUBMARINE (1951), and so on. (I refrain from listing the many earlier films about World War I submarines, some of which were silent films.) Somebody ought to hold a submarine retrospective film festival one day. Claustrophobes, be warned! All the films could be watched through periscopes. Probably the last high-profile submarine film until now was THE HUNT FOR RED October (1990, with Sean Connery), which made a big splash at the time (pun intended). This new one stars Jude Law, who is excellent, and rather scary, in the lead role as a very rough Scottish character. I learn from IMDb's invaluable trivia that he affected an 'Aberdonian' accent, i.e. one from Aberdeen. It sounded like George Galloway to me, and he is from Dundee, but whatever it was it was entirely convincing, so well done, Jude. The film was directed by a Glasgow lad named Kevin Macdonald, well known for his earlier THE LAST KING OF Scotland (2006) and for STATE OF PLAY (2009, see my review). He certainly has directed a high-intensity film with this one. The story involves a group of treasure-hunters acquiring an old Soviet submarine to search for gold in a sunken Nazi U-boat in the Black Sea, and much of the film was shot inside a real one, the old Soviet submarine moored at Strood in Kent. So there is plenty of authenticity about the film. As for the gold, the film story is that Stalin ordered two tonnes of gold to be sent to Hitler during the Stalin-Hitler Pact, but the submarine carrying it sank in the Black Sea. The gang of desperadoes gathered together by Jude Law for his madcap expedition includes jailbirds, a homicidal psychopath, a boy of 18 with a subnormal IQ, and a shifty representative of a crooked business concern. Half the crew have to be Russians because the sub is Russian and only they can operate it. Jude Law is the commander, with a handy translator standing beside him. The Russians are all colourfully rough, grumbling characters cursing everyone and everything in Russian like disorderly Cossacks looting a town and arguing over who gets to rape which girl. So there is endless tension, conflict, and enough confined atmosphere to drive any claustrophobe crazy with anxiety. The good news is that they find the gold. But there is some bad news. Watch and sweat.
