Good idea lost in the noise

An action-packed slog

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The plot had all the ingredients of a modern-day Treasure Island and a good cast but just like the fate of the characters, the story line faltered, tried too much on 'making it look genuine' with little research and left the viewer in the dark.

I liked the movie. I know it's fiction, written with a script, but one thing doesn't make sense to me.....They wanted the gold and the drive shaft, so they put the gold on the drive shaft. They were having a hard time reeling it in, because of the weight....so here's my question: SUPPOSE THEY DIDN'T NEED THE DRIVE SHAFT.....HOW WERE THEY PLANNING ON REELING IN THE GOLD?This review doesn't contain enough lines so I'm adding this just for the purpose of minimum lines requirement: The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe First Published in 1845 Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. " 'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door; Only this, and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow, sorrow for the lost Lenore,. For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore, Nameless here forevermore. And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me---filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, " 'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door, Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door. This it is, and nothing more."

Robinson (Jude Law) has been a submariner for 30 years. He's obsolete and gets fired after 11 years with the company. He is recruited for an outlandish treasure hunt. Back in 1941, Stalin acquiesce to Hitler and sends tons of gold to Germany. The U-boat transporting the gold sunk to the bottom of the Black Sea. An investor has a plan to recover the gold while the Russians are fighting Georgia on the surface. His representative Daniels (Scoot McNairy) joins him along with diver Fraser (Ben Mendelsohn) and youngster Tobin. The crew calls Tobin a virgin and therefore bad luck. Robinson insists on equal shares for everyone and Fraser riles up the crew arguing against the Russians getting the same share.Director Kevin Macdonald does well to infuse the movie with tension. Jude Law is good and Ben Mendelsohn is great. The main thing holding this back is the plot. There is a few too many exact coincidences. For example, they need exactly nine people to drive the boat but eight people would mean they can only surface. It's way too exact and leads to obvious conflict. I understand the need to raise the danger level but the plot takes a few too many twists and 15 minutes too long.

Jude Law, older, balder, looking like a more thoughtful Jason Statham, is the recently fired captain of a salvage submarine. A shadowy private party informs him that a Nazi submarine, filled with gold, lies on the bottom of the Black Sea, and that he, the shadowy private party, will fund a recovery expedition that will bring back myriad millions of dollars worth of pelf. Law will have a rusty old Russian submarine, now waiting for him in Sebastopol, and a crew of a dozen men -- half Russian, half Brits. That's the predicate. Do they make it? Well, yes and no.It's a surprisingly tense movie, effectively done, despite the holes left in the script. All submarine movies are tense. They always have to sink below their designated maximum depth. The pressure hull must creak and the glass face of the instruments shatter. This movie is no exception. The conventions are followed.But since there is no war, the conflict must lie elsewhere -- and it does. The Brits and the Russians don't get along. They all look like they've been "living rough," as Law puts it, sleeping in alleys and dumpster diving, but it's not all warmed-over Cold War stereotypes. Two of the Brits in particular are moral idiots. One is a deliberate murderer, the other a cowardly traitor.It's not only exciting but it's colorful. This is some submarine. It's much larger than the World War II specimens we're used to. And the lights! What decorator colors -- amber glow, fuschia, chartreuse, Chinese red, and a soupçon of neon blue. You could throw some great parties in that place if the decor weren't so unaccommodating and abrasive.The scenes of disaster or near-disaster are hair raising but they have to stand on their own because they're embedded in a gloopy plot in which sometimes the Russians understand English and sometimes they don't. That's nothing. Removing a drive shaft from a sunken submarine and using it to replace a busted one in a newer Russian submarine is, I imagine, impossible outside of some fully equipped machine shop. But it's done in one brief jiffy here. There are at least two explosions that are never explained, as if the viewers were so stupid that they didn't see the need for an explanation. Who cares? It blows up, right? The characterizations are rudimentary. They're like cardboard cutouts. An affectionate bond is shown between Captain Law and his teen-aged raw recruit, without any time being given to its development. But all of this is hardly missed because the episodes of action overwhelm all other elements of the film. It's not an adult movie but, for what it is, it's pretty good.