Movie Review - Black Sea

Black Sea (2015)

Starring Jude Law, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, and Bobby Schofield 

Directed by Kevin Macdonald

Maybe I've just hit the wall with submarine movies.  In the past year, I've watched Pioneer and Pressure, and perhaps unfortunately Black Sea is hitting many of the same notes as those previous flicks.  In fact, and I'm spoiling the lede here, Black Sea ends up getting the same grade as those prior pics -- it's perfectly average.

Much like those other flicks, we get a group of men who head down in a submarine (or some submersible) -- here, the group headed by recently unemployed Robinson (Jude Law) are searching for a German U-boat that sank decades ago and is rumored to be filled with gold.  Robinson's crew is a joint venture between some Russians and some Brits and the tension between the two groups comes to a head once Robinson announces that the gold will be split evenly amongst the crew once they surface.  The theory arises, though, if there are less people alive when they surface that means more gold per individual and this notion leads to some deviance.

Black Sea is probably the best acted of the trio of submarine flicks with Jude Law giving a well-balanced performance, but the film itself feels slowly paced and oddly unexciting considering the premise of men starting to turn on one another.  Kevin Macdonald does a nice job of making the film feel as unclaustrophobic as possible, but by the time the film finally starts rolling about an hour in, I was in the process of checking out.  Fortunately, Law's performance and the story kick up a few notches and the flick becomes more captivating, but it's a shame it's not a fully well-rounded film.

The RyMickey Rating:  C