Black Sea (2014)
Directed by Kevin Macdonald
A rogue submarine captain pulls together a misfit crew to go after a sunken treasure rumored to be lost in the depths of the Black Sea. As greed and desperation take control on-board their claustrophobic vessel, the increasing uncertainty of the mission causes the men to turn on each other to fight for their own survival.
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What critics compared Black Sea to
The film will not appear on favorite submarine film lists in the company of greats including “The Hunt for Red October,” “Crimson Tide,” “U-571,” “K-19: The Widow Maker,” “The Abyss” and “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”.
What plays out is a fast-moving deep-sea caper that blends the intricacy of "Ocean's 11" with the intensity of "The Hunt for Red October" and the cautionary notes of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre."
With a film legacy that includes Wolfgang Petersen’s 1981 German epic Das Boot, John McTiernan’s The Hunt for Red October (1990) and Tony Scott’s Crimson Tide (1995), the submarine has been the perfect setting for films that emphasize themes of mutiny, claustrophobia or conflict against nature.
From "The Enemy Below" and "Run Silent, Run Deep" to "The Hunt For Red October" and "Crimson Tide" by way of "Das Boot," the submarine thriller sub-genre has been a popular one for decades.
Perhaps Macdonald and Kelly sought to honor The Hunt for Red October by evoking aural memories of Sean Connery — dangerous to evoke memories of such illustrious precedents.
Thrills abound as a one-in-a-million plan of survival gets underway, borrowing from other undersea adventures like “The Abyss,” “Black Sea,” and “Sanctum,” all while the mystery of a final transmission from the drilling team poses concerns of a supernatural kind (not unlike “Event Horizon”).
The movie even steals some major plot twists from another recent submerged suspense thriller, 2014's "Black Sea."
The story itself seems to be borrowed from an amalgamation of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "The Italian Job" or any other treasure hunting film if it were set aboard a submarine.
Here he’s assembled not only a fabulous cast, but a talented crew with Christopher Ross (“Black Sea” and Amazon’s “Hard Sun”) shooting and Richard Bullock (“Frank”) providing production design.