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K-19: The Widowmaker



K19: The Widowmaker
Military Drama / English / 2002

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Rounding out my submarine movie marathon we have an early-2000s box office bomb starring Liam Neeson and Harrison Ford directed by the woman who brought us The Hurt Locker and Strange Days. I'm pretty optimistic for this one.

WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
It's easy to forget that while I really like Strange Days and The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow is also responsible for Near Dark and Point Break, neither of which I was terribly fond of.

K19 easily goes in that latter category of movies, unfortunately.

Rather than getting a Cameron-esque Hurt Locker-style slow burn submarine thriller, we get kind of a historical shitshow with, yet again, some extremely fluent, occasionally Russian-sounding, English speakers. It's odd to hear Ford put on the Eastern Bloc growl, but weirder to hear Neeson shift from literally growling to no accent at all.

The accent stuff is pretty easy to dismiss though, as long as the movie is great, it's totally forgivable, but this is not a great movie.

Simple premise being that rather than watching Ford and Neeson chew scenery as rival sub captains trying to obliterate each other underwater in a nailbiting thriller... we get Neeson getting demoted to XO in exchange for Ford who takes exception to Neeson's soft attitude towards his crew as they're assigned to conduct a training mission on the world's worst submarine.

No, it's not the world's *best* submarine... it's no Red October, it's in fact a giant piece of trash kept together by tape.

It leaks,
there are no radiation suits,
the onboard doctor got run over by a truck,
the nuclear reactor wasn't completely installed,
and Moscow's cheaping the **** out on everything in sight.

All this and more on top of the fact that Neeson apologizes and takes responsibility for all of his crew's ****-ups including when they injure themselves and are found drinking on the job. It's called the "Widowmaker" because everyone on board is going to die.

That's a pretty bad situation and the sub hasn't even ****ing launched yet.




This is when Ford shows up to oust Neeson as captain and proceed to put his foot up the collective ass of the communist crew by running constant fire and flooding drills while they dangerously send the sub down to crush depth which manages to impact the hull of the sub.

Great job Cap'n, you successfully damaged "the finest submarine in the world" despite the explicit advice of the former captain. I'm sure the gulag would love to have you.

Naturally, Ford plays the hardcore by-the-book patriot and this undermines his relationship with the crew eventually stirring up feelings of mutiny. There in fact eventually IS a mutiny which puts Neeson back in charge, who after abandoning his post once already and contradicting Comrade Ford at every turn suddenly goes, "Alright, cool, you are arrested for mutiny."

Ford asks him why and he goes "because it was wrong".

THIS after the nuclear reaction starts going into meltdown and Ford's already damned several crew members by forcing them to irradiate themselves to repair the ****ing thing. All of which are confirmed dead by the end of the movie.

So Ford, despite being offered alternatives, is directly responsible for ordering the unnecessary deaths of several members of Neeson's crew, and when faced with the prospect of EVERYONE ABOARD DYING because Ford insists on sacrificing as many people as possible so long as "we don't abandon ship" and "we don't accept the enemy's help", Neeson says mutiny at this point... is "wrong".

In what possible situation could it be right? They even established that there already exists acceptable procedures for the Political Officer to reassign command of the sub.

If the Political Officer is convinced they can abandon ship with the endorsement of Moscow, I'm not sure the Captain needs convincing.

Somehow this gesture of Neeson freeing Ford from the cuffs completely changes his perspective on the crew and all of a sudden he reverses his stance on abandoning ship and seeking help and even expresses compassion to the people who he condemned to death.

WHY? This Heel-Face-Turn makes no sense. There's no development here.

At the end he shows up to a funeral where the crew is mourning the dead and they look all happy to see Ford and Ford goes on commending them as war heroes.

YOU KILLED THEM. YOU ALONE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR DEATHS.

And this would be bad enough, but this was all for a ****ing TRAINING MISSION, with no combat whatsoever! They were supposed to park their ass in Atlantic, shoot a test missile, and then sit on a nuclear payload in case America fired on Russia. THAT IS IT.

All of the conflict arose entirely out of a coolant leak in the reactor (and that didn't start until halfway through the movie!), so "war heroes"? Really? For throwing themselves into lethal radiation on the whims of a partisan military ****stick?

ALL OF A SUDDEN the potential explosion is grounds to abandon ship because it could catch a nearby US destroyer and trigger armageddon. At what point was that NOT a plausible outcome BEFORE the mutiny, genius??

This character arc is so stupid, and he doesn't deserve the smiles and validation he gets at the end. Just straight Looney Tunes.

It is enough of a joke for the movie to point out that "the crew was sworn to secrecy for 28 years".

Sworn to secrecy? Over some epic military conflict in the Atlantic? NO.

The Soviets nearly NUKED themselves because they're cheap incompetent bastards and they virtually fed their crew members to a nuclear reactor just to save the metal they already invested!

So ******* dumb and the movie takes itself so seriously.


Final Verdict:
[Weak]