BLACK SEA : Monday 20th April 2015.

I saw 'BLACK SEA' earlier in the week which has been out on a limited release for some time now, and was keen nonetheless to see this as the cast is strong, the story seemingly taut & tight and it's Directed by Kevin Macdonald whose career highlights include 'Touching the Void', 'The Last King of Scotland', 'The Eagle', 'State of Play', 'How I Live Now' and the bio-pic 'Marley' amongst others. This time around we have a story set inside a rust bucket tin can submarine seeking sunken Nazi gold in the depths of . . . yes, you guessed it . . . the Black Sea.

As the film opens we know this is going to be a bleak grim tale. Robinson (Jude Law) is a gritty downtrodden divorced sub mariner northerner sitting in front of some young upstart kid who has to deliver the news that after 12 years with a northern English deep sea salvage firm his job has been made redundant. But Robinson is a contractor with little employment entitlements, and so as a gesture of good will for his years of service, and for being so good at what he does he is generously being given 8,000 pounds by his employer . . . but clear your desk today and leave your keys on the way out! Thanks very much . . . for nothing!

With very few prospects and unemployment levels high in da hood, Robinson ponders on his future, his broken marriage, and what is to become of him. As one door closes, another one opens and during a session at the pub with his former work mates he learns of a sunken Nazi U-Boat rumoured to be carrying a bullion of gold en-route from the WWII Russians to Ze Germans! Of course the sub never reached its destination and was torpedoed without a trace sometime during WWII. The company for which Robinson was working got wind of this, was able to locate it, but could never salvage it because of where it is located, the politics involved and the sums at stake that would generate too much unwanted publicity and all the wrong attention.

But, there is a wealthy un-named dude who is prepared to fund a salvage mission if Robinson can assemble a crew, find a vessel and has the gonads big enough to captain a voyage to the bottom of the sea. Of course he does, because this is what Robinson does best and what he has been doing all his life. With a 60% stake of whatever he can salvage he is motivated and sees that he is likely to be up for an equal share with his crew that will net him an estimated 2M quid! On the way he recruits a half English, half Russian crew and locates a rusting ageing submarine tube that is to be their home and their salvation . . . potentially.

With Daniels (Scoot McNairy) forced by his un-named backer to join the crew much to his claustrophobic chagrin, together with expert diver Fraser (Ben Mendelsohn), Tobin (Bobby Schofield) a young 18 year old no hoper that Robinson takes pity on, and Grigoriy Dobrygin as Morozov amongst a dozen or so others the crew set their depth gauge for the deepest darkest recesses of the Black Sea and their bountiful target. But of course, in any such undersea adventure, things never go quite according to plan. And so it is with this motley crew as the English contingent get more & more agitated with their Russian crew counterpart and tensions, emotions and attitudes mount with ultimately dire consequences on both sides.

As greed takes hold, cultural differences emerge, tempers rise and the stresses and strains of their underwater tin can trapped captivity reaches breaking point, the body count begins to escalate and the fever to reach the gold, salvage it, and get it to the surface reaches obsession levels. Just about everything that can go wrong does go wrong whether it is man made, mechanically made or naturally made and all of this plays out rather predictably in the final analysis that really adds little that we have not seen before.

This film moves along at a good pace, and there are a few twists & turns along the way, but it is fairly predictable stuff and it does have some redeeming features, but at times I thought the sub was the Tardis - small on the outside, huge on the inside and hardly instilling any sense of claustrophobic foreboding like 'Das Boot' did. Jude Law puts in a solid turn, as does Ben Mendelsohn and Grigoriy Dobrygin and various others that all add weight to the overall experience, but there is something lacking from this outing, and maybe it is the anti-climatic ending that is a little ho-hum, leaving you wanting more, as almost all perish in the deep dark lurking depths of the Black Sea as you would probably expect! Check it out while still on general release, but not essential on the big screen.

 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-