2.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity and violence
By Derrick Bang
Something’s rotten in the state
of cinema...
Back in the day of classic
Hollywood “disaster movies” — a cycle that began with 1970’s Airport — the survival rate was roughly
an audience-acceptable 50 percent. This issue revolved around key characters;
in 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure, we
lost Gene Hackman, Shelley Winters, Roddy McDowall, Leslie Nielsen and Stella
Stevens, while Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Pamela Sue Martin, Jack Albertson,
Carol Lynley and Eric Shea made it to daylight.
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| Frustrated by the mutual hostility that divides his Russian and British crew members, Robinson (Jude Law, center) angrily orders the men to get along ... while promising that this clandestine submarine mission will make them all very, very rich. |
More to the point, many of those
who perish do so heroically or tragically, in some cases while saving others. We
feel for them. Yes, all such films
have their villains, but no more than one or two ... and they always get their
just desserts.
Things have changed.
These days, disaster/survival
films have become slaughter films: mainstream cousins of the countless “dead
teen” horror flicks that erupted in the wake of 1980’s Friday the 13th. Most of the characters are nameless, faceless and
two-dimensional, just like all those doomed teens: stick figures present solely
to be killed, under unpleasant and often ludicrous circumstances. Nobility and
self-sacrifice are absent, replaced instead by venal and brutish behavior.
If we’re lucky, one person might survive, as in 2011’s
odious Sanctum, which raised the bar
for acceptable mainstream butchery. Alternatively, nobody survives, as with 2012’s The Grey. Heroic effort
proves futile.
Which, in my mind, makes such
films rather pointless.
And deplorably mean-spirited.
I’d hate to think this attitude shift
reflects our national psyche; if it does, we’re in a lot of trouble.
All of which brings us to Black Sea, ostensibly an action thriller
from director Kevin Macdonald, best known for absorbing dramas such as The Last King of Scotland and State of Play. I say “ostensibly”
because you shouldn’t believe the promotional slant; this is actually a
disaster movie. Which is to say, in the current vogue, a slaughter-fest.
And an insufferably dumb one, at
that.
