Review of Black Sea (2014) by Greg B — 08 Feb 2015

"Black Sea" is a limited release film about a submarine pilot (Jude Law) who embarks on a multi-national adventure to find sunken treasure in a capsized Nazi U-Boat. Supposedly, according to the film's premise, the Nazis hid gold bars in a U-Boat to keep the Allies from getting it, and Jude Law and his team, via a financier, go after it.

Of course, as is typical in buried treasure movies, greed sets in and the pirates ultimately put their material desires before their own self-preservation and the safety of the rest of the crew. As you can expect with the disaster genre, shit hits the fan pretty quick.

Even though I found the premise preposterous and extremely derivative, I thought Jude Law's gritty performance as the submarine captain coupled with the intensity and bravado of the film raised this film to the above average level.

The plot is far from perfect, and it should be abundantly obvious to even the casual moviegoer that the plot is extremely ridiculous and has absolutely no basis in fact whatsoever. I mean, think about it, if Hitler really did want to hide gold from the Allies, why would be put it in international waters rather than hiding it somewhere in Berlin? There are also twists in this movie that seem rather farfetched.

However, even though credulity goes out the window, I feel Jude Law's performance and the fact that this film was highly captivating save this film from being digestible popcorn fodder ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ B.