It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Absolutely Fantastic

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This really is the kind of theme that can justify an excellent movie, If done right.Black Sea really is done right.If Crimson Tide is the officers submarine film, this is one for the guys slopping the grease.It's a tale of the down trodden trying a last attempt at fighting back against "the man". It's the Miners Strike of '84. It's a workforce made redundant trying to fight the power.The camera work is down low at parts almost as if the cast are being filmed by a peeping tom. As the pressure cranks up the lights are predominantly neon blues and reds aboard the sub. The atmosphere achieved is almost alien.Gold is the aim. And gold is surely achieved in this supreme film. Pretty much faultless.A buoyant 9 out of 10 for me

The big big holes happened when the two divers found the gold and the drive shaft inside the derelict German submarine. Pulling and removing a drive shaft would have been a pretty big job if they had just had that to do, but they chose to deal with it by not bothering to show how they were supposed to do it and instead giving the impression it was such an easy job, it wasn't worth even showing it - hey, they found it and now they see it, now it's done! And the other big hole was all that gold they found within that submarine weighing two tons! Again, it would have been a pretty big job just moving all that gold to where they would be able to get it through the submarine beside the same place and way they got into the submarine to begin with - beside the pressure lock obviously. And there, they would have had to hand carry bars of gold into the pressure lock, fill it with seawater, carry the bars and then place them onto some cart which appears out of nowhere somewhere outside the submarine onto the seabed floor. It would have taken a whole lot of work, a lot of time, maybe a few days and a lot of trips with all those bars weighing a total of two tons! Where did they get all that oxygen? And then they would have - or rather the eighteen year old kid would have had a lot of work on his hands getting the gold into the salvage submarine, because the other guy was killed when he fell off the edge into a deep canyon. And the kid was not portrayed as much an expert diver to begin with. And where did that winch come from? If any of this was possible, before even attempting what they were planning to do, there would have been a scene where a few of them stand over a table making sketches and calculations about how they were going to even attempt a big job like this. But I suspect the makers of this movie nixed such a scene as that because of the impossibility of such a job to begin with and decided to just leave it up the viewers imagination which is the only way to do such a job as that - in one's imagination. But the movie was entertaining even though it lacked credibility.

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.

Robinson (Jude Law) has been a submariner for 30 years. He's obsolete and gets fired after 11 years with the company. He is recruited for an outlandish treasure hunt. Back in 1941, Stalin acquiesce to Hitler and sends tons of gold to Germany. The U-boat transporting the gold sunk to the bottom of the Black Sea. An investor has a plan to recover the gold while the Russians are fighting Georgia on the surface. His representative Daniels (Scoot McNairy) joins him along with diver Fraser (Ben Mendelsohn) and youngster Tobin. The crew calls Tobin a virgin and therefore bad luck. Robinson insists on equal shares for everyone and Fraser riles up the crew arguing against the Russians getting the same share.Director Kevin Macdonald does well to infuse the movie with tension. Jude Law is good and Ben Mendelsohn is great. The main thing holding this back is the plot. There is a few too many exact coincidences. For example, they need exactly nine people to drive the boat but eight people would mean they can only surface. It's way too exact and leads to obvious conflict. I understand the need to raise the danger level but the plot takes a few too many twists and 15 minutes too long.