BEFORE: Denzel carries over again, as I get to the real war/soldier pictures - a naval nuke-ular submarine in this case.
THE PLOT: On a US nuclear missile sub, a young first officer stages a mutiny to prevent his trigger-happy captain from launching his missiles before confirming his orders to do so.
AFTER: Either I'm slowly getting back onto a regular sleeping schedule, or the movie was more exciting - because I stayed awake for the whole thing. Ah, getting up on time for work is overrated, right? I wish I could have taken the whole week off and stayed with my parents, because I know my dad enjoys a good war film. But we did watch "Spider-Man 3" with my parents (on TV, with commercials, which seemed to take forever...)
There's an interesting conundrum at the heart of this one, since the sub does receive orders to launch missiles at some rogue Russian rebels who are in charge of some Soviet nukes - but then the sub receives a partial transmission, which might be an abort command, just as the radio gives out. Since the final message is just a fragment, it contains no confirmation codes, so the protocol would be to disregard it as a message (could be a fake from the Russians, I suppose...). But before following the launch order, which could lead to a "Hole-O-Caust" (Denzel's pronounciation, not mine), the executive officer demands that the captain re-establish communication and confirm.
It's a conundrum because (as stated at the end of the film) both the captain and executive officer are right, and in a way they're both wrong. And the X.O. had earlier stated that he believed that the true enemy was not the Russians, but war itself, as is the case in a post-nuclear world. So one's ready to start a war, and the other is trying to avoid one. There is an argument for nuclear war being its own deterrent - but the captain's a bit too old-school for that.
What interested me was the subtle difference between the two - the captain wasn't portrayed as completely hawkish and power-mad, and the X.O. wasn't a glorified peace-nik or a bleeding heart liberal. The same navy produced both men, so the difference between them should be a matter of just a few degrees. But those degrees end up splitting the sub's crew into factions.
Also starring Gene Hackman (last seen in "Class Action"), Viggo Mortensen (last seen in "Young Guns II"), James Gandolfini (last seen in "The Juror"), George Dzundza (last seen in "The Deer Hunter"), with cameos from Jason Robards (last seen in "Tora! Tora! Tora!"), Steve Zahn (last seen in "The Great Buck Howard"), Rick Schroder, Danny Nucci, Lillo Brancato (last seen in "Enemy of the State"), and Daniel Von Bargen (last seen in "Before and After") as the crazy Russian.
RATING: 7 out of 10 torpedoes
No comments:
Post a Comment