Having quietly honed her craft throughout the nineties, setting benchmarks for such sub-genres as the vampire movie (Near Dark), the bro-mantic action flick (Point Break), and the tech-noir (Strange Days) along the way, director Kathryn Bigelow must have thought that cold war sub thriller K-19 was her big chance to elevate her career to the next level; Big names, big themes, big budget, and independently financed so no studio would be hovering on her shoulder, second-guessing her ever move.
It was a disaster both critically and commercially, returning less than sixty-five cents for every dollar invested, making it one of the most expensive independent flops of all time. It's perhaps a cynical argument, but one that's there to be made, that were Bigelow a man she might have been allowed to bounce straight back and it's a testament to the industry's impatience with women directors that it took seven years before she was able to secure financing for next feature - the sleeper-hit-turned-Oscar-smash The Hurt Locker.
To be fair to K-19's many critics, it really isn't very good, and is a film that, ironically, by it's very nature as a submarine movie robs it's director of the greatest weapon in her arsenal - her inimitable ability to not only place, but, crucially, move the camera to such arresting effect. You can see her really trying, too, fast-tracking down cramped corridors and leaping around tight crew compartments like a claustrophobe trapped in an elevator. Timing, too, was likely a factor, and in the wake of 9/11 and the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism to the forefront of our collective conscious no one really wanted to hear a story of state suppressed Soviet heroism from the sixties.
The true story of an idealistic Captain (Ford) and a pragmatic Executive Officer (Neeson) who, faced with a leaking reactor aboard the Soviet Union's first nuclear submarine, butt heads over various courses of action that may or may not trigger the end of the world, K-19 stands as something of a poor man's Crimson Tide. With so much supposedly at stake the film is crushingly dull, and with such a definitive ticking clock at it's center strangely devoid of anything approaching momentum. More it's a series of grim-faced shouting matches padded by the worst in disaster movie cliché (carrying around a photo of the girl you're going to marry, just as soon as you get home? Really?). Ford, who let's be honest has been shit for about fifteen years now, really must be apportioned his share of the blame, acted clean off the boat at every turn by Neeson's measured, quietly authoritative performance.
One sequence does stand head and shoulders above the rest, in which a rotating shift of engineers venture into the reactor chamber and brave it's deadly radiation to weld an improvised cooling system into place and hopefully avert disaster. Watching each man's individual horror in seeing his predecessor enter resolute and emerge moments later looking like a human hot-pocket, fully aware that he is next, is nothing short of haunting and an image that will long stay with you.
The rest of the picture struggles for clear definition and with both ford and Neeson playing a different side of noble the role of antagonist falls to the State. Rarely seen on screen the higher-ups of the great Soviet Empire really do get it, painted as nothing short of farcical buffoons, giving the crew a boat that isn't finished, a sick-bay stocked with the wrong drugs, and advice on how to deal with the lethal levels of radiation along the lines of "Eat plenty of fresh fruit."
In the face of such a monstrous, mindless, automaton then of course every common man is a hero, and in the end K-19 simply takes an inordinate amount of time to make a very moot point, purporting to tell us that Communism was in essence a very decrepit system doomed to collapse under the weight of it's own inflexibility. That kind of message might have played just fine in the eighties, but seems really rather redundant coming more than a decade after the world already stood and watched it crumble.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
Halfway decent extras for a studio back-catalogue Blu-ray include a feature length commentary track from director Kathryn Bigelow and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth that's dry without being dull. Bigelow, an accomplished technician, talks logistics, mostly. Also included is a reasonably in depth making-of featurette complete with interviews with principle cast and producers. Three smaller featurettes detail the make-up, the production design and the model work employed for the exteriors. Theatrical trailer is also included.
"K-19: The Widowmaker" is on sale May 4, 2010 and is rated PG13. Drama. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Written by Louis nowra (Story), Christopher Kyle (Screenplay). Starring Harrison Ford, James Ginty, Joss Ackland, Liam Neeson, Peter Sarsgaard, Shaun Benson, Tygh Runyan.
