Great Film overall

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

I'm an avid submarine fan and love these kind of movies, but though also a fan of some of the actors, this is a movie to avoid at all costs. I was baffled to see a 6.4 average for this on IMDb. It contains so many plot holes, not just for a person familiar with the operation of underwater vessels and diving (just 1 example: how about sonar pings from a 50's sub making no sounds?), but will most likely be unbearable to anyone because of this. Whole segments are just as if they were left out, and the whole concept was down right stupid on top of that, and the reasoning among the characters is amazingly weird, and not in a good way. I will not go into any more details, not to spoil it for those still wanting to waste almost 2 hours of a Saturday night as I did, but heed my advice - avoid it.

*Spoilers*Submarine movies have the natural ingredients to become classics and I was hoping this could live up to it's predecessors success. I was wrong. It starts with a double take at Jude Law's Scottish accent and progresses slowly with a hint of promise as the adventure begins. The promise slowly builds as the film initially takes shape but swiftly sinks after being torpedoed by the characters and storytelling. I was forced to turn it off once the only English-speaking Russian crew member is stabbed in what seemed like a scene from a performing arts GCSE class. The characters are unbelievable and the fact that some Australian psycho starts causing trouble over absolutely nothing just killed it. Some custard-cream munching soft-lad from Liverpool finds himself on the boat and is entrusted with helping fix the diesel engine - duly causes a mass fire, explosion and they're doomed. Jude Law smashed the only radio on board with an Axe because one crew member has checked his lottery numbers - really? Oh and some bloke commits suicide after hatching the plan to salvage all the Nazi gold - sure he does! Don't bother watching this trash and watch Red October on repeat.Das Boot this in the bin.

There have been many submarine films in the past, but the genre seemed to have died out, until this one appeared. The two most famous submarine films ever made were DAS BOOT (1981, 293 minutes long in the original uncut version) and ON THE BEACH (1959, see my review). In the latter film, the submarine was incidental to the story but much of the time was spent in it. Of the many wartime submarine dramas of earlier years, I remember UP PERISCOPE (1959, with James Garner), SUBMARINE COMMAND (1951, with William Holden), and others the titles of which I have forgotten. Others include MYSTERY SUBMARINE (1963), SUBMARINE D-1 (1937), John Ford's SUBMARINE PATROL (1938), S.O.S. SUBMARINE (1941), SUBMARINE SEAHAWK (1958), SUBMARINE ALERT (1943), SUBMARINE BASE (1943), SUBMARINE WARFARE (1946), PIRATE SUBMARINE (1951), and so on. (I refrain from listing the many earlier films about World War I submarines, some of which were silent films.) Somebody ought to hold a submarine retrospective film festival one day. Claustrophobes, be warned! All the films could be watched through periscopes. Probably the last high-profile submarine film until now was THE HUNT FOR RED October (1990, with Sean Connery), which made a big splash at the time (pun intended). This new one stars Jude Law, who is excellent, and rather scary, in the lead role as a very rough Scottish character. I learn from IMDb's invaluable trivia that he affected an 'Aberdonian' accent, i.e. one from Aberdeen. It sounded like George Galloway to me, and he is from Dundee, but whatever it was it was entirely convincing, so well done, Jude. The film was directed by a Glasgow lad named Kevin Macdonald, well known for his earlier THE LAST KING OF Scotland (2006) and for STATE OF PLAY (2009, see my review). He certainly has directed a high-intensity film with this one. The story involves a group of treasure-hunters acquiring an old Soviet submarine to search for gold in a sunken Nazi U-boat in the Black Sea, and much of the film was shot inside a real one, the old Soviet submarine moored at Strood in Kent. So there is plenty of authenticity about the film. As for the gold, the film story is that Stalin ordered two tonnes of gold to be sent to Hitler during the Stalin-Hitler Pact, but the submarine carrying it sank in the Black Sea. The gang of desperadoes gathered together by Jude Law for his madcap expedition includes jailbirds, a homicidal psychopath, a boy of 18 with a subnormal IQ, and a shifty representative of a crooked business concern. Half the crew have to be Russians because the sub is Russian and only they can operate it. Jude Law is the commander, with a handy translator standing beside him. The Russians are all colourfully rough, grumbling characters cursing everyone and everything in Russian like disorderly Cossacks looting a town and arguing over who gets to rape which girl. So there is endless tension, conflict, and enough confined atmosphere to drive any claustrophobe crazy with anxiety. The good news is that they find the gold. But there is some bad news. Watch and sweat.

There's a fabled Nazi U-Boat down in the depths of the ocean, aboard is gold, lots of gold. So it's time for a not so motley crew of submariners to go forth - in an antiquated submarine - and try to set themselves up for life. Naturally nothing goes as planned, there are hidden agendas, rival factions within, claustrophobia reigns supreme, will anyone survive? Will you want any of them to survive?Black Sea is not without problems, though the complaints about credibility and believability not being available? Well these are surely from folk who don't watch enough of, or understand the workings of, genre cinema of this ilk. Kevin Macdonald (director) and Dennis Kelly (writer) have crafted a tight and efficient submarine thriller. Characterisations are clichéd, with nods to other genre type of films evident, but the group dynamics pulse with danger and the inevitable peril sequences strike the requisite suspenseful chords.Black Sea doesn't define or reinvent the submarine thriller wheel, it just keeps the rotor shafts turning. Strong casting and earthy photography help matters, to make this - ropey accents aside - better than a time waster of a viewing. 6.5/10