K-19: The Widowmaker Review
by Jonathan F. Richards (moviecritic AT prodigy DOT net)July 23rd, 2002
IN THE DARK/Jonathan Richards
K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
PG-13, 138 minutes
It's not quite as bizarre casting as John Wayne's immortal Genghis Khan, but Harrison Ford's stint as a Russian submarine commander in Kathryn Bigelow's inspired-by-actual-events thriller, "K-19: The Widowmaker" is still a head-scratcher. Wayne, at least, played the Mongol warlord straight up. Ford assays a sort of Russian accent, which he accomplishes by softly rolling his R's. The effect is vaguely disconcerting, like seeing the Venus de Milo in overalls, or Michael Jackson in blackface. After a while you get used to it, but you never completely shake the feeling that something is not right.
The actual events occurred in 1961, a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis, in a nervous world under the darkening shadow of Mutually Assured Destruction. Into these troubled waters the Soviet Union launched its first nuclear submarine, K-19, armed with nuclear warheads, and with orders to carry out a test launch to show the Americans that this was not an evil empire to be trifled with. But on July 4, as it was heading for the North Atlantic, disaster struck. The cooling system of the sub's nuclear reactor sprung a leak. In a matter of hours, the whole ship would blow, setting off a nuclear explosion that could well have triggered a global Armageddon. The only hope was to send volunteers into the reactor to fix it manually. The radiation exposure meant certain and painful death. The stakes, the tensions, and the levels of real-life heroism were unimaginable.
It's an irresistible story, and once Bigelow ("Strange Days") gets it to the critical section, she tells it with a tense and crackling authority. Regrettably, it takes a long time to get there. The expository opening half is leaden-footed, as it sets the stage for the ominous launch of a jinxed ship so fraught with disastrous portent that even the bottle of champagne at her christening fails to break. And before the sub even leaves the shipyard, the deaths and accidents have begun to pile up like dirty clothes on the laundry room floor. Not for nothing does K-19 acquire the nickname "The Widowmaker".
She's originally commanded by Captain Polenin (Liam Neeson, also rolling his R's), surely the tallest captain in the submarine fleet and also the nicest. He treats his crew as family, and they love him. But the Kremlin wants a sterner hand at the helm for this crucial project, and Polenin is replaced by Capt. Vostrikov (Ford) before the launch. Polenin, however, doesn't leave the ship, he simply adjusts to a subordinate position, a volatile arrangement fraught with the potential for conflict. Naval dramas are strewn with these stern-guy-nice-guy conflicts, from Bligh and Christian to Queeg and Maryk, and the point usually turns out to be that as wacko as the martinet may seem, he's a helluva seaman.
Vostrikov is a no-nonsense sort, and he immediately shows who's boss by firing a key technical officer who picked the wrong time to be drunk, and replacing him with a downy-cheeked youth (Peter Saarsgard) fresh from the naval academy. They put out to sea, where he continues to flex his authoritarian muscles by ordering drill after drill, wearing down the men and the equipment, and recklessly subjecting the ship itself to stress tests only a man who has leafed ahead in the script would try. The line between making his point and sending the ship to Davey Jones's locker is paper-thin, and he plays awfully fast and loose with a very expensive piece of equipment under conditions that admit no margin of error.
Movies about historical events whose outcome we know depend not on suspense but on process for their impact. Although the K-19 story is not widely known, the fact that we're watching it gives us a clue as to whether or not the nuclear holocaust happened. Bigelow deserves high marks for the nail-biting edginess of the crucial repair section of the movie, but she earns only a gentleman's C for her routine following of the well-blazed trail for getting there.
How accurate is the story? The basic facts are true, the stakes were enormous, the sacrifices were ultimate. A lot of the rest, including the tensions between the fictional Vostrikov and Polenin, is there for the movies, which is as it should be. Russian survivors of the real incident are on record as feeling betrayed by the way they are depicted "as a bunch of alcoholics and illiterates," (which overstates the case), and have declared it to be "nothing like the reality." If the movie works, this becomes less relevant, except perhaps to the people whose memory is being served. But here the tale unfolds ploddingly and without imagination, the conflicts are boilerplate, and by the time we've adjusted to the comic shock of Harrison Ford's Russian accent, the damage has been done.
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