Black Sea is a 2014 submarine disaster thriller film directed by Kevin Macdonald, written by Dennis Kelly, and starring Jude Law. The premise of the movie is fairly starightforward – a man down on his luck assembles a crew that is sponsored by mysterious organization to find a sub in the Black Sea rumored to be filled with Nazi gold. Black Sea (2014) movie review
Most of the movie is filmed inside the actual sub, with occasional flashbacks or shots outside of the sub as it navigates deep caverns. There is also a setup in the beginning that is outside on land, but it doesn’t linger on that. Since the movie mainly focuses on the tension among the crew, we get to them as soon as possible. They are shown to be an unlikable bunch of misfits that society has cast aside due to their inability to conform to it. Not going to list their quirky characteristics but a lot of them are Russians who appear untrustworthy. They drink a lot, swear, in it for their own gain, uncaring, and overall just scruffy looking bunch. Each one of them serves a function of the submarine so losing just one could spell disaster.
Anyway, it doesn’t take long before each one of these people starts to go against each other. They recruit each other by making others appear crazy, useless, or simply not important. (bear in mind EVERYBODY is useful to make the submarine function well). This causes a lot of yelling and the the caption giving rousing speeches that don’t help for long. This causes people to start to lose it due to being so deep in the sea with tensions rising and submarine falling apart. It makes people question the mission, the sanity of the captain, and the risks being worth it. They are looking for something that might not be there at all.
By the end of the movie, everything goes south. The tension gets even worse, the crew starts to disappear one by one, and the captain is trying to do his best to keep it together. He also realizes he has limited options to get out alive. Jule Law’s performance here is fantastic. He nails this old sea worthy captain role. At the end, few highly predictable things happen but the tension that it builds up is worth the watch. However, some scenes could have been shortened to make the movie shorter but that is a minor complaint. Everybody did a solid acting job and the movements around the sub were believable and well done. In general, subs tend to have many nobs and levers, making it almost impossible to stand upright at most locations.
The effects of the movie were good enough. Not many shots outside of the submarine but the ones shown were passable as they were blankated by darkness. Overall a good movie with plenty of tense moments, cliche characters, and good acting all around. The movie is a study of characters with gold plot put in as mere motivation to get people in the submarine. It is paced well with some action and good amount of uneasiness thrown about.
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