THRILLER; 1hr 55min
STARRING: Jude Law, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn
Down under: Law (left, with Grigoriy Dobrygin)
Scottish naval officer turned salvage operator, Robinson (Law) is a formidable man with no further stake in his life. His wife and son have already become casualties of his work. So when he is summarily laid off after 11 years, the prospect of a sunken German U-boat packed with Nazi gold on the floor of the Georgian Black Sea is a siren-like lure for Robinson and his mixed-bag Russian/British crew (McNairy is its sole, leery American, Mendelsohn an erratic Australian diver). As the men plumb watery depths in a hunk of junk submarine, their fragile alliance degenerates under the watchful eye of director Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland ).
For anyone who hasn’t spent time in Das Boot, or any other movie sub, the squeezy dimensions of these tubular girls would test the most hardened souls. Macdonald’s vessel is no different: in short order, the men are at each other’s throats. They contend with the escalating jeopardy in the same flinty spirit with which they came on board while the queasy grip of their struggle, exactingly recounted as it is, grows as suffocating as a dead weight of water.
