3.5 stars. Rated R, for violence and profanity
By Derrick Bang
Boy, this one takes me back.
Director Donovan Marsh’s handsomely mounted adaptation of 2012’s Firing Point is a suspenseful, well-paced thriller. The George Wallace/Don Keith novel is, itself, a throwback to Alistair MacLean classics such as The Guns of Navarone and Ice Station Zebra, both of which also became crackling adventure films.
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| U.S. submarine commander Joe Glass (Gerard Butler, right) and his counterpart, Russian commander Andropov (Michael Nyqvist) contemplate how best to handle an international crisis that is escalating rapidly out of control. |
The comparison to Ice Station Zebra is particularly apt, because Hunter Killer unfolds like a 1960s Cold War thriller, complete with U.S./Russian anxiety, posturing politicians, ground-level grunts given an impossible mission, and a maverick submarine commander willing to defy D.C. in order to avoid World War III.
Ah, the good ol’ days.
This new film also unfolds like a mystery, if only initially. The story begins deep beneath Arctic Circle ice, as a U.S. “hunter-killer” submarine clandestinely shadows a Russian sub: one side keeping tabs on the other. Suddenly the Russian vessel explodes, to the astonishment of the Americans; before they can consider whether to mount a rescue, they’re also crippled and sent to the ocean floor.
By whom, we wonder.
Back at the Pentagon, anxiety mounts when the American sub fails to make its scheduled report. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Charles Donnegan (Gary Oldman), a veteran hawk always willing to believe the worst of the Russians, wants to mobilize nearby battleships and destroyers. Rear Admiral John Fisk (Common), a next-gen negotiator loathe to jump to conclusions, seeks alternative solutions.
U.S. President Dover (Caroline Goodall, standing in for Hilary Clinton), considering all options, authorizes investigative reconnaissance by the USS Arkansas: a second hunter-killer sub, to be commanded by Joe Glass (Gerard Butler). He’s an unusual choice: a blue-collar “guy’s guy” who gained his knowledge of submarines the practical way, by working his way up through various departments, in marked contrast to Annapolis graduates with no hands-on experience.
In other words, Glass is savvier — and sneakier — than all those Pentagon desk jockeys.
Meanwhile…
Long-range satellites have revealed unusual activity at the Polyarny Russian naval base, at the outermost western side of Kola Bay. Senior National Security Agency analyst Jayne Norquist (Linda Cardellini), sent to the Pentagon with need-to-know details, advises that Russian President Zakarin (Alexander Diachenko) has just arrived at Polyarny for unknown reasons.
