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K-19 : The Widowmaker [2002]
from Paramount Home Entertainment
starring Harrison Ford|Liam Neeson
directed by Kathryn Bigelow

Features:

• Anamorphic
• Dubbed
• PAL
• Widescreen

Editorial Review:

An intense dramatisation of a long-suppressed Cold War anecdote, K-19: The Widowmaker is the first big Hollywood film to view the conflict through a Soviet periscope, casting Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson (with slight accents) as patriotic Russians.

In 1961, as NATO deploys long-range nuclear attack submarines, the Kremlin forces the Russian Navy to follow suit, whether they're ready or not. Ford takes over from popular skipper Neeson in command of the eponymous submarine, riding the men hard through a missile test, and then coping with an escalating series of crises as a jerry-built reactor threatens to melt down (and perhaps start World War III).

Though the political specifics are fresh, this has all the expected elements of a sub movie, citing everything from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Das Boot to Crimson Tide and The Caine Mutiny as sailors bristle mutinously under a marine martinet. This, along with inept engineering and ideological interference, prompts disaster.

Director Kathryn Bigelow, the most undervalued talent in Hollywood, is in her element with heroic men under pressure, and a terrific central stretch has comrades trying to fix the reactor even though they've been given the wrong protective gear and start coming down with radiation sickness as they work. Less successful is a superfluous epilogue that pulls the old Spielberg present-day-reunion-of-the-aged-survivors-at-a-gravesite gambit. --Kim Newman

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

• A Dramatic True Story
  This movie is about the Soviet Unions first nuclear submarine, the K-19. The Soviets in their rush to get a nuclear deterrent off the U.S. coast seemed to have cut corners on manufacturing and quality control of this submarine. We see some of this in the opening scenes of the film. This movie depicts an actual event that took place in 1961. The crew nicknamed the boat the widow maker because ten people associated with the boat died before it ever left the dock. The one thing I appreciated most about this... more info

• Underrated gem from a lovable director who seldom gets it right
  K-19 may be historically inaccurate, but show me a military movie that isn't. This film is way more true to life than the idiotic fantasy that was U-571, in which Americans won the second world war by capturing a cipher machine (FYI, it was a British crew who captured the machine and anyway the Brits already had one, reverse-engineered by Polish intelligence and given to them in one of the more stunningly generous acts of wartime cooperation).
  The important thing is not so much how doggedly authentic... more info

• undersea shenanigans...
  The submarine film as been done so many times, and there really are some real classic underwater sub films. So many, in fact, that this feels redundant, especially as it adds nothing new to that particular genre.

  It's very gritty, and realistic, which I think could be K19s downfall. It's probably the msot realistic submarine film I've ever watched, but others are better because they tend to suspend disbelief in places.

  So we get a very strict, serious and ultimately boring underwater adventure where a... more info

• the real story was somewhat different
  There is something basically wrong with this film. For those who know the real story of K19, the film should have been a scathing indictment of the Communist system. Instead of that, what the film conveys is feelings of horror about the Cold War and nuclear energy. It is true that, from a technical point of view, the accident is shown as it happenend, and the submarine is shown as it was. However, the two strong, courageous, Communist captains played by Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson simply never existed.... more info

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