Review: Black Sea

There is one standout scene in the new submarine thriller Black Sea from director Kevin MacDonald. The scene involves several characters in diving suits trying to figure out where they are on the sea floor. The scene is tense and uses some of the finest underwater footage I have seen in a movie of this type since James Cameron's The Abyss. The scene is the one thing that separates this run-of-the-mill action film from many others.

Cameron is a likely influence on Black Sea and the ghost of his films lingers in many of the films elements. The core group of men that set out to steal Nazi gold from a sunken U-boat feel strangely akin to the space marines in Aliens. The underwater claustrophobia mixed with sappy backstory is reminiscent of The Abyss. The film is in debt to so many films right from the get-go because so many of the characters feel like charactertures.

Jude Law plays Captain Robinson, a man who has been stomped on throughout life and sees this heist as his one chance to get what is owed to him. He assembles a rag-tag team of men to carry out this dangerous mission in hostile waters. The men will have no rescue if things go wrong and of course they do.

The second half of Black Sea is much better than the first half. That first half is too familiar to garner up any real engagement with the film. Once the men start to fight amongst themselves over the possible fortune they stand to make, the film gets more interesting.

Black Sea ultimately never braves new territory. Its a solid film, handsomely mounted with almost nothing remarkable about it. The story had so much potential that one has to blame MacDonald here. The story is ripe with metaphors of hell and the darkness of human desire. MacDonald instead focuses on the procedure of the heist, something we have seen before. Ultimately the film also wants to be a redemption story for Robinson but the final moments reveal that the film never earned our emotional investment. While Jude Law shines the rest of the film remains forgettable.

3/5