This is a film that should really be moving. The true and tragic events of the explosion aboard a Russian submarine that sunk during a military exercise in 2000 are brought to the screen by writer Robert Rodat and director Thomas Vinterberg. However, despite their best efforts to flesh out the characters of the doomed sailors, to show the mistakes made on land that helped seal their fate and the presence of Matthias Schoenarts in the lead role, the film left me cold.
It’s all efficiently enough done but I failed to emotionally engage with the proceedings shown. It doesn’t help that there are extended scenes involving Schoenarts’ wife and child that are way too long, and frankly a bore. In the early stages of the film, Colin Firth makes a couple of appearances as a British naval commander. I found myself being reminded of Raymond Burr in Godzilla or Lorne Greene in Tidal Wave as it felt like he was inserted from another film. Fortunately, Firth’s character becomes much more relevant in the third act, and he shows what a good actor he can be.
The best scene also occurs near the end as Max Von Sydow’s Admiral Petremko holds a press conference where angry relatives of the trapped men demand answers and actions. But it takes an awfully long time to get to the better parts of the film, and I almost gave up before reaching them.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10