K-19: The Widowmaker Review
by Mark R. Leeper (markrleeper AT yahoo DOT com)July 22nd, 2002
K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson star in the downbeat and harrowing story of the first Soviet Navy nuclear
submarine and its early and painful death. The story, based on an actual incident, is considerably broadened-- somewhat controversially--from what are even now little- known details shrouded in secrecy. Rating: 6 (0 to 10), high +1 (-4 to +4) Note: Much of what this film is about is not revealed until a plot twist well into the film. I refrain from saying what the incident is all about, though it is a matter of historic record.
K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER is being positioned as a summer action film. In a sense I suppose that it really is an action film, but instead of a stimulant it is much more a depressant. It tells us that the Soviet Union was trying to be a vodka-and-caviar world power on a Kool-Aid budget. For several decades they managed to be the world's second place world power, but they could do that only by paying a huge personal price. K-19 is the story of a piece of the price they paid. It should be noted that the current Russians, ambivalent as they are about the Soviet regime, are extremely indignant over how negatively at least one preliminary version of the script portrayed the conditions in the Soviet Navy.
The year of the story is 1961. This is after Stalin had committed the Soviet Union to being a major world empire. Nikita Khrushchev is doing all the posturing he can to live up to the demands of that position within a second or third-class economy. That disparity put huge demands on the Soviet Navy. They had nominally moved into the status of a nuclear navy with some under-funded nuclear submarines. The first of the series was K-19, a submarine that had been rushed into service without the prudent safety mechanisms and precautions that the Americans would have employed. It is surprising that the Soviet could be so successful fielding nuclear submarines under those conditions. But it also was extremely foolhardy.
In the film K-19 is on its first mission (though the real K-19 had been in service since 1959). Capt. Polenin (played by Liam Neeson) commands the K-19 somewhat reluctantly because he knows the construction was rushed. The submarine still has many bugs that have not been worked out. Rather than take Polenin's advice and slow the first mission, the Navy assigns Capt. Vostrikov (Harrison Ford) to take over command of the K-19 from Polenin. Vostrikov is from a prestigious Navy family but he is rumored to have gotten his command through nepotism. He wants to put to rest that rumor. He is ambitious and is anxious to whip the crew into military excellence, pushing them to "the edge" regardless of the toll on the crew and the submarine. Polenin's loyalties are to his men and he does not want to see Vostrikov's abusive regimen ruin a good crew. Neither man fully recognizes the stakes of being too demanding of an untried nuclear submarine.
Two captains with incompatible loyalties in the confinement of one submarine is a formula for conflict and possible disaster. Several traditional omens already seem to point to K-19 being a "cursed" boat, but their biggest danger is from a very non- traditional source, the nuclear reactor. The crew has an inexperienced reactor officer and a doctor inexperienced in nuclear accident cases. The so-called "curse" works itself out in an exceptionally horrifying dilemma for the crew. Personally, I am quite used to films intended to scare and I think there is little I could see on the screen that would really bother me. This film did scare me. The most horrific scenes in this film are based on truth and are even understated. That knowledge made me more shocked at scenes in this film than any film I have seen in years. It is hard to imagine a more horrifying dilemma than the one the two captains on K-19 faced. This film is more harrowing than it is exciting. I think one misstep of the script, however, is to have an extended epilog several years after the incidents of the story. Though the makeup for Neeson and Ford for this sequence is astonishing, the sequence only belabors points already made.
Neither Harrison Ford nor Liam Neeson is an actor one would expect to play a Russian. But perhaps they are no more cast against the ethnic type of the characters they portray than Kirk Douglas was in SPARTACUS. The only other familiar actor is Joss Ackland. His role is an overbearing and demanding Soviet official, much like the part he played in CITIZEN X, though his most familiar role these days may be as a bad guy who attempts to blast the Energizer Bunny in a television commercial. Speaking of CITIZEN X, it is interesting to compare this film to that one. The films are very different in plot but quite similar in theme.
Katherine Bigelow gives us in K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER a lot that is familiar or even cliched from submarine films, but what will be remembered is the courage of men obeying orders as deadly and more painful and devastating than any given on D-Day. I rate K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
[email protected] Copyright 2002 Mark R. Leeper
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