Film Review: Jude Law Submarines a Passable But Unspectacular ‘Black Sea’

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CHICAGO – I’m on board with Jude Law leading a film and neutral about submarine movies as a genre. My primary pre-screening interest in the quietly marketed thriller “Black Sea” was what Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald would do with this material following his hit with the hard-hitting drama “The Last King of Scotland”.

As it turns out, Jude Law as a desperate, angry and greedy skipper is not nearly as impactful as Forest Whitaker’s brutal Ugandan dictator. And “Black Sea,” which dives down to oceanic hull break point, isn’t propelled by nearly as deep of a story as the Oscar-winning Whitaker film.

Rating: 2.5/5.0

As for standing the test of time, “Black Sea” won’t. The film will not appear on favorite submarine film lists in the company of greats including “The Hunt for Red October,” “Crimson Tide,” “U-571,” “K-19: The Widow Maker,” “The Abyss” and “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”.

While the film only grazes the surface of where these kinds of films need to go, “Black Sea” does make you feel claustrophobic and its metallic pings give you a realistic front-row seat to sweaty and stressful submarine life.

The way the crew gets mashed together, though, feels rushed and overwritten. All down on their luck and strapped for cash, a few guys talk over booze about a mythical gold haul left for the ocean to swallow and no man to ever find. Back during Nazi Germany, Hitler apparently stuffs a U-boat full of gold bricks. Of course, Jude Law and friends think they know how and where to unearth it even though no one else ever has.

Read Adam Fendelman’s full review of “Black Sea”.

Deciding to go for the gold isn’t a decision I had a hard time buying into. Fine, doing so gives this relatively shallow story some life. It’s the assemblage of a few good men who bridge a murky English/Russian language gap that I can’t come to terms with. The film hurries through the rounding up of them as if they were waiting for the call and had nothing else going on in life.

A quick cheerleading speech from Captain Robinson (Jude Law) sends our gaggle of greedy men on their way into rough waters – immediately battling with irrational tension. I fail to believe that these guys would squabble over such petty disagreements when each person is promised a life-changing $2 million from the gold stash to get the deed done.

Continue for Adam Fendelman’s full review of “Black Sea”.

Jude Law stars as Robinson: a rogue submarine captain after sunken treasure in the Black Sea in “Black Sea”.
Image credit: Giles Keyte, Focus Features

Continue for Adam Fendelman’s full review of “Black Sea”.