Black Sea (2014)

There's something about the submarine movies which gives a boost to the "thriller" factor, because that's the typical genre we have here - "Hunt for Red October", "Crimson Tide", "U-571", "K-19" and more or less even "Das Boot". "Black Sea" is no exception.

Something nice in this niche is that despite the limited context most of the times somehow we get a new original story. In "Black Sea" the action takes place in the present day. A sub captain in the commercial navy (Jude Law) is fired by his employer firm where he worked for more than 10 years. Since there aren't many open positions for a sub captain he decides to follow a tip given by a formare mate. Apparently the firm which fired him found out that somewhere on the bottom of the Black Sea lies a WW2 U-boat loaded with Nazi gold, but it was too complicated to legally try to get to it. However, a mysterious guy is willing to fund a private expedition. And like that we're getting on board of an old Russian sub, with a bunch of people quickly gathered to form a crew, half Russian, half British, all ready for the treasure hunt ...

From here onward we're between the classic theme of "if at the end are less alive, my cut is larger" and some sort of underwater "Moby Dick" where the gold is the whale and captain Ahab is Jude Law. The movie's catchy, but a bit over the top. First, for some characters the behavior change seems too sudden. Second, I'm not an expert in submarine technology, but what wee see sometimes is hardly believable at least compared to other movies. Thirdly, at some point it starts to look too much like a "horror" where you wonder who's the next who dies and if in the end there's somebody left alive ... ( spoiler: the answer is yes ;) )

Rating: 3 out of 5