Black Sea ***
“Brave the deep. Find the gold. Trust no one” is one of a couple of taglines that tells you all you need to know. It’s a submarine heist with the added pressure (literally) of several tonnes of water to make retrieving heavy gold bars all the more difficult. And with a suspension of reality – and the laws of physics – it’s agreeable enough viewing from The Last King of Scotland director Kevin Macdonald. It won’t be remembered as his finest work to date, even if the concept is a curious one.
Submarine captain Robinson (Jude Law) is made redundant from maritime retrieval firm, a job that was his whole life after the Navy and being estranged from his wife and son. With no real prospects and little money, Robinson hears of a plan to recover millions of pounds of gold, rumoured to be lying in a former Nazi submarine in on the seabed of the Black Sea. Funded by a shadowy backer, he agrees to lead the salvage job and picks a team of twelve experienced men, both British and Russian, as well as a young man who knew is newly departed best friend. However, tensions between the crew grow as pressure to find the haul increases.
Once you get over Law’s struggle to find the right Scottish lilt, he strikes an impressive, embittered working-class hero. In fact it very much bangs the war drum for the little person out there being shafted by big corporations – very apt in continuing times of austerity. Law’s Robinson paints a solid leader to get behind from the start, with the actor proving he can beef up like a Tom Hardy and do menacing when needed. Gone are the slick, smooth-talking characters he usually portrays. Empathy for Robinson’s plight is ratcheted up right at the start, though his depth of character sometimes feels wanting, even with the ‘happier family times’ flashbacks there to back up where his determination to complete the dangerous job comes from.
Number one ‘problem’ in the aging sub is ex-lag Fraser, played by Aussie actor Ben Mendelsohn who plays unhinged villains and criminals on tap, and has no problem convincing us of the former as the ugly, racist catalyst here. The rest is a true Macdonald dramatic character role-playing as each flexes his muscles and either gets his wings clipped or has another destiny in store. This is the real intrigue Black Sea holds, a thriller working out who will blow next, not whether the job gets done.
In this sense, Black Sea can’t simply be compared to other sub films like The Hunt for Red October or Das Boot because even though there is the Second World War angle, this film is really about the mix of the men on board and how they cope with being enclosed with so much paranoia at stake, not necessarily the end job. That said Macdonald fails some characters, though steers well clear of caricatures – still, we really don’t understand the Russians motivations, for example, so only ever get a one-sided reaction. Even then some of the Brits feel like manual sub fodder in this.
Robinson’s fate feels a little patchy and somewhat flat played out in his final scenes. Quite how he achieves his goal – with the mechanics of sub operation called into question – is anyone’s guess, especially as gold weighs a pretty bit. The ending feels like a Macdonald desire to see justice done and the little man triumph, understandable for the whole fairy tale of becoming an overnight millionaire to work. It just adds a whiff of disbelief and requires your commitment in what you’ve just witnessed – and co-endured with these men – to suitably end proceedings. If Macdonald loses you beforehand at any moment, the ending just feels clichéd and quite daft.
Black Sea is a competent enough maritime drama with pressure-cooker-styled tension to flex the sub’s walls. It holds the interest to get you through the (crew’s) ordeal and offers a game in ‘guess the survivor’ at the same time. Not to mention, it’s a creative alternative to the standard bank heist venue.
3/5 stars
By @FilmGazer
by lgileskeddie
