[REVIEW] Black Sea (2014) Is An Effective Sub Thriller

Runtime: 114 Mins
Rated: R
What To Expect: An effective sub thriller but above all, a good story

Good sub movies are always right up our street.  So are movies about stolen and/or found loot.  Like A Simple Plan (1998), a movie starring Bill Paxton where he and some friends find millions in cash.  So this movie is almost like a cross between Das Boot and A Simple Plan, where men go to insane depths in an iron beast, to the point where the bolts are sheering and acting like bullets, then disagree with one another over the sharing of the loot.  It has some problems, but Black Sea is largely a very fun movie.

During WW2 a German submarine packed to the gills with Soviet gold sinks in the Black Sea for unknown reasons.  The Black Sea is also known as the Dead Sea, so the wreck is in pretty good condition.  Not many know about the loot, but the Georgian government is zeroing in on it, among others.  A private company then, hires old sea dog Jude Law (Cpt. Robinson) to lead a crew of ex-submariners to head down to the wreck and retrieve the gold in a decrepit retired Soviet sub.  Half the crew are Russian, which leads to tensions.  More tensions arrise over disputes among all about the share per man handed out.  To sweeten the deal, they must sneak in beneath the Russian Black Sea fleet, probably the most lethal naval formation outside a U.S. Navy carrier group.

I only have one fault and complaint with this movie.  The question, ‘why the fuck would anyone do that?!’ (exclamation mark emphasized) appears several times throughout the movie. Certain decisions defy all logic to make narrativve ends meet  To me though, they could almost be ignored and didn’t ruin the movie, but to some exceptions might be taken.  Or to put it another spoiler-free way, the disputes over the money are unrealistic, to say the least.

Still, there’s too much good going on here to give this a bad or even average score, because this is a damned good movie.  Jude Law gives a towering performance here as the Scottish captain leading a band of individual characters, none of which seems similar to the other.  The effects?  Also superb, for such a low budget movie.  Good on ’em for using a real decommisioned Soviet submarine, instead of hiring some pissants fresh out of college to recreate it on their high-powered computers.  There is also a nice twist in there, which doesn’t feel gimmicky or over the top.

So yes, check this movie out.  It’s a swing and a hit.  I also enjoyed certain criticisms online that there were no females in the movie.  Now come the fuck on!  They really wanted to shoe-horn a woman in there, just because?  Good job sticking to your guns, director Kevin Macdonald…