K-19: The Widowmaker [Blu-ray] DVD Review
Actor(s):
Harrison Ford,
Liam Neeson
Based on an incident that was officially suppressed for 28 years,
K-19: The Widowmaker is a fine addition to the "sub-genre" of submarine thrillers. The first major American film about Russian cold war heroes, it re-creates the nightmare endured in 1961 by the crew of the Soviet nuclear submarine
K-19, when an exposed reactor core nearly resulted in a nuclear catastrophe. Several crewmen died, and
K-19's captain (played by Harrison Ford) had to assert his command when near-mutiny favored his executive officer (Liam Neeson). This escalating tension gives the film its potent dramatic thrust, and both Ford and Neeson deliver intense performances while director Kathryn Bigelow (
Near Dark,
Strange Days) ably controls a sub full of seething testosterone. It's not as viscerally thrilling as the classic
Das Boot or
U-571, and some
K-19 survivors protested the inclusion of inauthentic drinking scenes, but the movie benefits from grand-scale production values, seamless computer graphics, and a compelling real-life twist.
--Jeff Shannon
