Review of Phantom (2013) by Dave J — 18 Dec 2013

Wednesday, December 18, 2013.

(2013) Phantom.

THRILLER/ WAR.

It says that 'it was inspired by true events' except that we don't know on what percent. Executive produced, written, directed by Todd Robinson which takes place during the Cold War Russia and Captain Demi(Ed Harris) has just returned from a long submarine voyage and is not looking forward to another. High ranking Markov (Lance Henriksen) then informs him that Captain Demi's retirement has been put on hold, and orders him as well as his crew to take command over this other submarine that's operational while dismantling the one he came off on. At this point we don't know who gave them the orders nor how. Along with his old crew, Demi has to carry with him 2 KGB passengers- one of them is Bruni being played by David Duchovny who claims that he has some technological equipment that is needed to be checked out. And it's not long where Demi and Bruni are going to but heads, and that the equipment he wanted to check out is really a cloaking device called the "Phantom"- hence the title.

If there was one movie that can put me to sleep(I almost fell asleep just writing a review for it), it had to be this one since it was quite hard listening to perfect American accents babbling throughout which unlike most movies it was American actors trying to sound like foreign people would sound like if they were attempting to speak English. Meryl Streep won many awards doing this from playing Italian, Polish and French, and this film can somewhat confuse people since the characters were supposed to be Russian. Believe me, I had to re-watch the first 30 minutes or so again so that I can have a better grasp on what it's characters are supposed to be portraying. Another problem is that their setting wasn't really convincing either when it's supposed to take place in Russia. I mean usually, before the real story is shown, we also get a little involvement of Russian lifestyle which the reason might be is that it would have been too costly to really have the film filmed over their. The authenticity has obviously been compromised which this exact scenario almost looked like that it could happen anywhere else besides Russia saying that the makers should've just call it an American setting and it would have been much more convincing.

2 out of 4 stars.