Review of Black Sea (2014) by Quincy T — 05 Jun 2015

Dark and gritty, but also trapped by shallow unrealistic delivery. There's always a niche appeal for submarine stories. The very concept promises many characters sharing a mutual predicament while confined in the depths. Black Sea offers decent psychological thriller with its good set-up and claustrophobic cinematography, but the personalities often do stupid things just for the sake of drama. One must wonder if the problems here could've been resolved with proper human interactions, such as conversations without violence undertone or not resorting to outright violence on a whim.

Robinson (Jude Law) is recently fired from his job. Disgruntled and very keen on making money, he jumps at the first opportunity of big pay. The gig is to recover sunken World War II submarine which allegedly contains heaps of gold. Thus, he assembles his team of merry misfits and dives for the riches. His whole team consists of either inexperienced or slightly mad crew.

Cue the crazy debacle where someone gets randomly stabbed or a few misclicks cause the submarine to nose dive, and the operation sinks faster than the submarine itself. Everyone is aggressive every time, there's barely any human interaction which doesn't lead in heated argument. I'm not an expert but surely when placed in crucial condition as submerged with actual chance of dying, one might need to cooperate instead of constantly picking a fight.

The visual is fitting for the theme, mostly shot in typical small corridor or halls, it is meant to be claustrophobic. The acting isn't half bad, Jude Law does his best though the accent is a bit jarring. It takes advantage of the premise well, and produces occasional morale ambiguity for gritty effect. A couple of the twists are decent in creating more dilemmas to elevate the tension, excluding the rest which are the results of tragic human error.

Black Sea is true to the deep nature of submarine film, sometime suspenseful and engaging, though most of the personality clashes are ridiculously forced.