K-19: The Widowmaker

In 1961, a Soviet submarine suffers a reactor breakdown that could destroy the ship and—worse yet—detonate its warheads, triggering World War III. Another movie “inspired by true events” that nevertheless includes all the clichés of a Hollywood genre—in this case, the run-silent-run-deep flick, with the captain (Harrison Ford) and his executive officer (Liam Neeson) clashing over how to deal with the crisis. Ford and Neeson (even with the Boris Badenov accents) are the film’s main assets, deploying all their combined screen presence (which is considerable) in support of the trite mechanics of Christopher Kyle’s script. Kathryn Bigelow’s direction is solid, but there’s no real suspense—the ending is a foregone conclusion and we know at first glance which characters are going to live and die.