By Guy Wheatley
The Texarkana Gazette

K-19 the Widow Maker is based on an actual Soviet Submarine disaster. Director Kathryn Bigalow and National Geographic have created a disaster of their own. Fortunately, the only fatalities involved in the 2002 celluloid version will be to careers.
The K-19 was a Hotel class boat and was the first nuclear powered Soviet submarine equipped with ballistic missiles. She was the Soviet Answer to the American Polaris subs.
This was the cold war at itís worst. The Soviets rightly felt that they were behind in technical and strategic achievements. Misreading the mindset of America, they feared the Soviet military weakness would prompt an American first strike. Desperate to send a warning to the CIA, they rushed K-19 into service to demonstrate their retaliatory capability.
The movie chronicles the first few weeks in the infamous career of this jinxed boat. Captain Nikolai Zatayev (Harrison ford) replaces captain Vladimir Yenin (Liam Neeson) who has displeased the Soviet powers that be by failing to meet expected deadlines. The film is less than subtle in telling us that Yenin is the victim of unrealistic expectations and the incompetence of the Soviet system. One admiral laments that Yenin is "more concerned about his people than about the Soviet Union." This exaggerated characterization of Soviet motives and people is typical of the plot destroying hyperbole that keeps this film from accomplishing much.
Fordís portrayal of Zatayev is tragically forgettable. Rather than convey a since of powerful emotional control, Fordís Zatayev comes across as flat and unemotional. The performance is not aided by Fordís horrible Russian Accent. Zatayev is forced to order young men to their deaths in order to save the sub. Ford could have just as easily been ordering a chicken sandwich.
Neesonís Yenin is as incompetent at the beginning of the film as his superiors say he is. He is too easygoing and fails to prevent an attempted mutiny. When he sides with the captain, it comes across more as a lack of courage than an ethical decision. We are supposed to believe that Zatayev eventually learns about true strength from Yenin. Sadly, Neeson fails to convince us that Yenin has any strength himself.
The film plods it way through the moral lesson that the Soviet way is bad and our way is good. Faced with a potential nuclear disaster, the crew is forced to abandon their old way of thinking and adopt a more realistic view. The accident is an epiphany for the crew and by then end of the movie, we almost expect to hear them singing "the Star Spangled Banner."
There were real heroes in the K-19 incident. Young Soviet sailors knowingly went to their deaths to save their crewmates. The camera spends too much time chasing Ford and Neeson to pay much tribute to the real heroes of the event. The movie misses the real story.
The cinematography and set design are far superior to the film. The interior of the sub conveys the claustrophobic confines of a Hotel class sub. The instrumentation is convincing in its potrayal of Soviet technology of the day. The set is believable and lends the only air of credence the film manages to produce.
Scene angles are well thought out and executed. One scene starts in a sailors berth, then traverses through the double hull construction of the sub to an exterior shot showing wiring, conduits, and bracing on the way. Other scenes crowd people and equipment into the shot until the audience can almost feel the shoulders of the actors, but still leaves enough room for the action.
The set and cinematography create an expectation of technical accuracy that is unfortunately lacking. Early in the film, Zatayev takes the K-19 to her crush depth. This scene has become a staple in submarine movies giving the captain the opportunity to demonstrate his confidence in his boat. In K-19, it is a ridiculous and unnecessary scene that forces the movie to do an about face. The movie from the beginning to this point, and from this point to the end is about the K-19s deficiencies. Such an idiotic display of bravado would have most probably put the K-19 on the bottom.
There are many other distracting technical flaws, including the scene of the outer hull buckling under pressure, and breaking through the polar ice with several knots of forward speed. The biggest technical problem is the fear that the reactor will detonate in a "thermonuclear" explosion setting off the warheads in the missiles. It is not possible for a reactor to suffer a nuclear explosion, and the Soviet sailors never feared one. They were concerned about a chemical or steam explosion that would spew radioactive material into the ocean. The attempt to heighten drama with bad science has created a bomb of the celluloid kind.

Pg-13

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