K-19: The Widowmaker

A rather clunky cold-war maritime thriller that manages to mix plausible science with shallow propaganda in a rather cack-handed fashion - and a (mis)casting that gives the film the same sinking feeling that the submarine must have felt when it first put to sea. It's a synch that the 2-kopeck systems aboard this state of the art Russian boat "K-19" are going to cause the maiden voyage to be riddled with dangers, and Captain Harrison Ford who blindly believes that nothing can possibly go wrong both before and after the boat sets sail leads to loads of crew resentment - not least from Executive Officer Liam Neeson - who all see him as a sort of "Captain Bligh" figure. Technically, the film does evoke a genuine sense of peril and claustrophobia, but the stars don't really have enough to work with beyond their very two-dimensional characterisations and the sight of John Shrapnel (whose son Lex also features) as a Soviet Admiral is verging on the risible. It has moments of pace, and jeopardy - but they are few and far between and more than nullified by the rather dodgy CGI and really pedestrian script.