K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)

Based on an incident that was officially suppressed for 28 years, K-19: The Widowmaker is a fine addition to the "sub-genre" of submarine thrillers. The first major American film about Russian cold war heroes, it re-creates the nightmare endured in 1961 by the crew of the Soviet nuclear submarine K-19, when an exposed reactor core nearly resulted in a nuclear catastrophe. Several crewmen died, and K-19's captain (played by Harrison Ford) had to assert his command when near-mutiny favored his executive officer (Liam Neeson). This escalating tension gives the film its potent dramatic thrust, and both Ford and Neeson deliver intense performances while director Kathryn Bigelow (Near Dark, Strange Days) ably controls a sub full of seething testosterone. It's not as viscerally thrilling as the classic Das Boot or U-571, and some K-19 survivors protested the inclusion of inauthentic drinking scenes, but the movie benefits from grand-scale production values, seamless computer graphics, and a compelling real-life twist. --Jeff Shannon Amazon.com

 He turned himself into a hero!!
Oh, No, not another Submarine movie! Well, yes. This film deals directly with the Soviet mindset (read: xenophobic), in general, and the utter lack of understanding in dealing with Atomic power, in particular.
The Soviet Union would not see the errors of their ways, until the Chernobyl disaster. On the K19, nuclear power would make this submarine the flagship of the Soviet Navy. As we see at the beginning of the film, it's Captain is deservedly frustrated with the Soviet procurement system that delivers sub-standard parts to be fitted to it's "flagship". He utters his displeasure publicly, which gets him demoted to Executive Officer, and a hardline Captain that has but one objective: To "successfully" test and evaluate the K19's abilities to function as a strategic weapon.

Add to this volatile mix a green Reactor Officer, who replaces the original Reactor Officer, after the latter is relieved of duty for drunkenness (which is to plague the Soviet Forces, as it does it's Citizens). Nothing good can come of this, and that assessment is proven right, when the Captain issues orders that at first glance, puts the boat in direct danger of foundering. The boat does well, after all, but the tension between the two Senior Officers places the rest of the K19's Officers to rally behind the XO, and rally they do, after one of the K19's reactors goes critical, because of (here we go again) shoddy workmanship.

During the crisis, the XO relinquishes command back to the Captain, and it is here, where we see the crew work as one to not only save the boat, but themselves as well. The first seven crewmen to affect repairs to the reactor are sure goners, as the levels of radiation in the reactor room are well past lethal. Repairs are successful, after the second try, and the Captain makes the difficult decision to surrender the boat to American Authorities, because he realises that to wait for help from Soviet Naval Authorities means there will likely be no one left alive to see the boat limp home. All this becomes unnecessary when another Soviet sub comes to the K19's aid!

During the Captain's Mast, those Officers who were able to testify to the actions of the Captain during this crisis all came forward to state that the Captain issued orders that saved the boat, and the men left in his care, as well as the Soviet Union, from Nuclear attack by the United States, were the worst to happen, after the disaster. For all this, he never commanded another vessel for the remainder of his career. The dedication at the end of the film gives one a sobering view of how the Soviet Machine regarded it's human component.

There are thrills and chills aplenty in this film. Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson are effective as Captain Vostrikov and the Captain-demoted-to-XO Polenin. Peter Sarsgaard plays the green Reactor Officer very well, and is quickly becoming an Actor to watch for.
There are special features of note on the DVD, such as a "making of", and three featurettes on the technical aspect of creating the K19 for the screen. While "K19, The Widowmaker" isn't the best Submarine film (that title still belongs to "Das Boot") out there, it is exceptionally entertaining. March 31, 2008

 great real life drama
I do not understand the morons that say that the movie does not have enough drama, hey folks "wake-up" "grow-up", this is a real life movie not a fantasy movie about Spiderman. The plot is great,the scenes are shot amazingly well, my prizes to the director, the actors were great too...I certainly recommend this movie to anyone, I have watched it three times on DVD, i really enjoied the drama :-) December 9, 2007

 Never really does get to the point. 1.2 stars.
You know it's bad when the most exciting part of the movie isn't when the battles take place, but when the action breaks and the guys get to see their wives and loved ones.

Never have I sat through a war-based movie more abysmal than this one.

I was nearly sound asleep before the end.

Cover Art: D-
Characters: D
Dialogue: F
Length: F-
Overall: F

1.2 stars. December 3, 2007

 Despite fantastic director and actors.....
.....this movie just falls flat. Harrison Ford is probably one of the greatest underappreciated actors of our time and is one of my favorites. I've always liked Liam Neeson too. Director Kathryn Bigelow has also been a favorite of mine since the mid-80's.

Despite all of these "big time" players, this movie is so BOOOORRRRRRIIIIINNNNGGGG!

The plot slowly (and I DO mean SLOWLY) unfolds and the end result is just plain unsatisfying. Another thing that bothered the hell out of me was Ford's on again/off again "Russian" accent. Not only did it come and go, but when it was there, it was a TERRIBLE imitation of a Slavic accent.

I really expected so much more. I rented this title once and will never have the desire to see it again, even if it's on network TV.

If you like Harrison Ford, I would recommend:

Any of the original STAR WARS trilogy films
Any of the INDIANA JONES films
BLADE RUNNER
WITNESS
REGARDING HENRY
AIR FORCE ONE

If you like Kathryn Bigelow, I would recommend:

NEAR DARK
POINT BREAK

August 24, 2007

 A superior submarine movie - sad and elegiac rather than triumphant
'K-19: The Widowmaker' 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 by them to British intelligence in one of the more stunningly generous acts of wartime cooperation).

The important thing is not so much how doggedly authentic the story is. After all, Wolfgang Petersen's classic 'The Boat', surely the ultimate sub movie ever in its original miniseries form, is fictional. What matters is the quality of the story, and the story told here in K-19 is profoundly touching. Harrison Ford seems really engaged for the first time in a long time, Liam Neeson is properly cast for a change as a slightly ambiguous figure (instead of just as a nice guy) and Peter Sarsgaard is heartbreaking as the head of the team that attempts to repair K-19's reactor. 'K-19' has an emotional depth and sense of tragedy that most movies set in submarines simply don't come close to. ('The Hunt for Red October' may be the most famous sub movie of recent times, but it suffers severely from being based on a Tom Clancy novel.)

Kathryn Bigelow's films have veered between genuinely eerie (Near Dark, The Loveless), silly (Point Break, Blue Steel) and romantic but a bit daft (Strange Days). For my money, this is the first movie she's made that her fans don't have to apologise for. So who cares that the crew all have silly Russian accents? Like you'd prefer that Harrison Ford sounded American and Liam Neeson sounded like he was from Ballymena? The sadness and grimness of life in the USSR have not generally been paid attention to by US filmmakers, who for the most part have been content to portray Soviet military personnel as cannon fodder, but this is a brave effort and a gripping and affecting movie. The complete story of the K-19 is almost so sad that you couldn't film it at all, so it's a small miracle that they managed to get even this bit of it onto celluloid. August 3, 2007

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