Black Sea (2014) (English Language)

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115min

Cast: Jude Law, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn …and more

Jude Law stars as a down-on-his-luck Scottish submarine captain forced to take a job searching the bottom of the Black Sea to find a Nazi U-Boat filled with gold, tensions rise between his multinational crew in a confined environment with disastrous consequences.

Director Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland, Touching the Void) weaves together a tense under-water action/thriller with many of the classic atmospheric elements that make these kind of films a very specific-sub genre, think of the claustrophobic thriller elements of classics like ‘Das Boot’ and ‘The Abyss’.

Unfortunately ‘Black Sea’ lacks much of the effective mix that makes these classics so memorable, there is a mild cocktail of themes like corporate exploitation & greed, claustrophobia and a clash of cultures that vaguely drives the story but they feel like a box-ticking exercise to get to the main heart of the movie which a fairly simple and unoriginal action/thriller story.

Don’t go into ‘Black Sea’ expecting a particularly thought-provoking psychological thriller and you will come out having enjoyed a straightforward tense and gritty action/thriller, on that front Jude Law and company certainly do the business.