Nuclear (Disaster) Options
This weekend's review: K-19: The Widowmaker.
Back when I did Sub Month in 2014, I compiled a list of submarine movies with the help of my friend who’s a WWII buff and then had to decide which ones I was going to be watching. One of the movies that didn’t make the cut was K-19: The Widowmaker, but it looked interesting enough that I kept it on my “To Watch” list. Having now finally gotten around to watching it, I have to say that, while I’d never consider it a great movie, I probably would have enjoyed it more than a good number of the movies I actually watched for Sub Month.
Instead of being a WWII movie, this submarine movie relates to the Cold War and, as I found out after the fact, is based on an actual incident. In 1961, the Soviets have built a new submarine, nicknamed K-19, and are planning on putting it through its paces in order to show the Americans that they have the firepower to continue the policy of mutually assured destruction. However, since the government is big on meeting deadlines, corners have been cut, something the captain of K-19, Mikhail Polenin (Liam Neeson), keeps warning them about. Since he’s not toeing the party line, they demote him to first officer (he’s still the most experienced person with this ship and crew) and replace him with Captain Alexi Vostrikov (Harrison Ford) shortly before the mission begins. They also wind up with a new man in charge of the sub’s nuclear reactor, Vadim Radtchinko (Peter Sarsgaard), whose knowledge of reactors comes from academic training rather than experience. Vostrikov insists on constantly running drills and pushing the sub to its limits, which doesn’t endear him to the crew very much. Still, they successfully reach their destination and fire a test (and presumably not actually nuclear) missile, so all seems well…until the reactor starts malfunctioning. The temperature begins rising rapidly, and if it gets over 1000 degrees, the entire sub will explode. Vostrikov wants to try to get Soviet help, while Polenin thinks they should accept help from some nearby American ships. What follows is a series of power struggles, jury rigged solutions, and a whole lot of reminders that it probably wasn’t that great to live in the Soviet Union.
I have to admit, there are large stretches of the movie that are pretty much following the beats you’d expect. There’s the unreasonable captain, the inexperienced man whose inexperience will probably lead to trouble, the crewmen who all look similar and thus are difficult to talk about unless they’ve got some memorable personality quirk, and even discussions of mutiny. Up until the reactor malfunctions, I might even go so far as to describe the movie as dull. Once things start to heat up (literally), however, the story get a little more interesting. Part of this is because it contains the “having to cobble together a solution from the limited resources available” trope, and part of it is because there’s more of a sense of tension and drama, since the characters who have to apply the fix are putting themselves at tremendous risk. There’s one other element that becomes more noticeable at this point, too, though I’m not entirely sure if it was intentional or necessarily truly enjoyable.
Said element is that you really start to get a sense of what the Soviet mindset was like. Most of the characters obligingly follow orders, even if it could get them killed, and very rarely question those orders or do anything besides complain a little. There are also moments when most of the crew isn’t let in on just how severe the situation is, perhaps to make it easier for them to accept the orders they’re given. This may even go so far as to explain one of the most baffling parts of the movie for me, when you expect things to follow the usual formula and instead a character does a complete 180 on their previous position. Again, I’m not sure if the filmmakers were trying to convey this mindset, but if they were, they did a very effective job, and I actually found it a bit chilling to think that the entire Soviet military, if not the entire Soviet population, was slowly trained into thinking that way. Maybe the movie needs a “psychological horror” descriptor in addition to being called a drama.
There are a few other, smaller things worth mentioning. While Liam Neeson does a decent job sustaining a Russian accent, Ford is a lot more hit and miss. The movie does successfully surprise you at times, though as with the example I mentioned above, it’s not always a satisfying surprise. While it’s hard to tell most of the crew apart, a lot of them are pretty handsome, so at least they’re nice to look at. And finally, there’s one plot point that I feel was glossed over when it shouldn’t have been. When the radiation leak is first noticed, Radtchinko obviously panics and goes to report it to Vostrikov. Just before he does this, however, one of his men tells him that he had noticed something off earlier but didn’t report it. You would expect this man to get chewed out over his mistake. Instead, Polenin seems to blame Radtchinko and his lack of experience for the situation, and Radtchinko’s the one who gets a character arc. To be fair, it’s possible the man who failed to report the problem was also given a fair bit of screentime and a chance for redemption by being one of the ones who put themselves at risk to save the sub, but like I said, it was difficult to tell which one he was. I just found it odd and a little unfair that Radtchinko was the one blamed for it. That may be true to the trope, but it was mostly unwarranted in this particular case.
If you like sub movies and want something other than a WWII setting, I’d give this one a look. It does take a while to get going, but its back half is definitely stronger and leaves you feeling fairly satisfied when all is said and done. So despite its problems, I’d say it’s worth diving into.
Back when I did Sub Month in 2014, I compiled a list of submarine movies with the help of my friend who’s a WWII buff and then had to decide which ones I was going to be watching. One of the movies that didn’t make the cut was K-19: The Widowmaker, but it looked interesting enough that I kept it on my “To Watch” list. Having now finally gotten around to watching it, I have to say that, while I’d never consider it a great movie, I probably would have enjoyed it more than a good number of the movies I actually watched for Sub Month.
Instead of being a WWII movie, this submarine movie relates to the Cold War and, as I found out after the fact, is based on an actual incident. In 1961, the Soviets have built a new submarine, nicknamed K-19, and are planning on putting it through its paces in order to show the Americans that they have the firepower to continue the policy of mutually assured destruction. However, since the government is big on meeting deadlines, corners have been cut, something the captain of K-19, Mikhail Polenin (Liam Neeson), keeps warning them about. Since he’s not toeing the party line, they demote him to first officer (he’s still the most experienced person with this ship and crew) and replace him with Captain Alexi Vostrikov (Harrison Ford) shortly before the mission begins. They also wind up with a new man in charge of the sub’s nuclear reactor, Vadim Radtchinko (Peter Sarsgaard), whose knowledge of reactors comes from academic training rather than experience. Vostrikov insists on constantly running drills and pushing the sub to its limits, which doesn’t endear him to the crew very much. Still, they successfully reach their destination and fire a test (and presumably not actually nuclear) missile, so all seems well…until the reactor starts malfunctioning. The temperature begins rising rapidly, and if it gets over 1000 degrees, the entire sub will explode. Vostrikov wants to try to get Soviet help, while Polenin thinks they should accept help from some nearby American ships. What follows is a series of power struggles, jury rigged solutions, and a whole lot of reminders that it probably wasn’t that great to live in the Soviet Union.
I have to admit, there are large stretches of the movie that are pretty much following the beats you’d expect. There’s the unreasonable captain, the inexperienced man whose inexperience will probably lead to trouble, the crewmen who all look similar and thus are difficult to talk about unless they’ve got some memorable personality quirk, and even discussions of mutiny. Up until the reactor malfunctions, I might even go so far as to describe the movie as dull. Once things start to heat up (literally), however, the story get a little more interesting. Part of this is because it contains the “having to cobble together a solution from the limited resources available” trope, and part of it is because there’s more of a sense of tension and drama, since the characters who have to apply the fix are putting themselves at tremendous risk. There’s one other element that becomes more noticeable at this point, too, though I’m not entirely sure if it was intentional or necessarily truly enjoyable.
Said element is that you really start to get a sense of what the Soviet mindset was like. Most of the characters obligingly follow orders, even if it could get them killed, and very rarely question those orders or do anything besides complain a little. There are also moments when most of the crew isn’t let in on just how severe the situation is, perhaps to make it easier for them to accept the orders they’re given. This may even go so far as to explain one of the most baffling parts of the movie for me, when you expect things to follow the usual formula and instead a character does a complete 180 on their previous position. Again, I’m not sure if the filmmakers were trying to convey this mindset, but if they were, they did a very effective job, and I actually found it a bit chilling to think that the entire Soviet military, if not the entire Soviet population, was slowly trained into thinking that way. Maybe the movie needs a “psychological horror” descriptor in addition to being called a drama.
There are a few other, smaller things worth mentioning. While Liam Neeson does a decent job sustaining a Russian accent, Ford is a lot more hit and miss. The movie does successfully surprise you at times, though as with the example I mentioned above, it’s not always a satisfying surprise. While it’s hard to tell most of the crew apart, a lot of them are pretty handsome, so at least they’re nice to look at. And finally, there’s one plot point that I feel was glossed over when it shouldn’t have been. When the radiation leak is first noticed, Radtchinko obviously panics and goes to report it to Vostrikov. Just before he does this, however, one of his men tells him that he had noticed something off earlier but didn’t report it. You would expect this man to get chewed out over his mistake. Instead, Polenin seems to blame Radtchinko and his lack of experience for the situation, and Radtchinko’s the one who gets a character arc. To be fair, it’s possible the man who failed to report the problem was also given a fair bit of screentime and a chance for redemption by being one of the ones who put themselves at risk to save the sub, but like I said, it was difficult to tell which one he was. I just found it odd and a little unfair that Radtchinko was the one blamed for it. That may be true to the trope, but it was mostly unwarranted in this particular case.
If you like sub movies and want something other than a WWII setting, I’d give this one a look. It does take a while to get going, but its back half is definitely stronger and leaves you feeling fairly satisfied when all is said and done. So despite its problems, I’d say it’s worth diving into.