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HUNTER KILLER
Director: Donovan Marsh Cast: Gerard Butler, Common, Gary Oldman, Linda Cardellini, Toby Stephens, Carter MacIntyre, Michael Nyqvist, Michael Trucco, Ryan McPartlin, Zane Holtz, Alexander Diachenko, Michael Gor MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 2:01 Release Date: 10/26/18 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 25, 2018 Hunter Killer offers more convincing evidence that Hollywood screenplays are either created or helped along by some sort of cliché machine. Then again, the movie is based on a novel (called Firing Point, written by the duo of George Wallace and Don Keith) so maybe that machine has its hold on the world of mass-market literature, too. There really isn't an original thought in this movie's head, except, perhaps, that it gives us a story with three different sections, each of which follows its own, unique line of clichéd storytelling and dialogue. The storyline from the title follows the captain and mostly anonymous crew of an American submarine. The captain is the type of man who plays by his own rules, while the recognizable members of the crew often debate with his unconventional choices. Inevitably, they're proven wrong, of course. They never quite learn that their captain has the benefit of the screenplay's happy coincidences and multiple examples of dumb luck on his side. The other two sections feature a team of Navy SEALs and a bunch of bureaucrats, from the military and the government, at the Pentagon. The soldiers have been sent to hostile land on a top-secret mission, in which they have shed any kind of identifying items before parachuting into enemy territory. They also, apparently, shed any type of identifiable personality or back story with those items, which makes their inescapable deaths—one at a time, after doing something particularly heroic—seem especially pointless. As for the bureaucrats, well, they banter and negotiate and get all huffy about the bantering and negotiating going on without their knowledge. A couple of them, like the sub captain, are right, and it's up to the rest of the higher-ups to figure out that fact eventually. The point is that there's a whole lot of nothing going on this story, which keeps itself busy with a plot involving a military coup in Russia, while the submarine, the SEALs, and the bureaucrats go about their respective, routine scenes of peril, action, and high-stakes yelling. We're repeatedly told that the fate of the world is on the line, because one wrong move from any of these groups could result in a full-on nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia. The movie isn't so bad that we're kind of hoping for such horrific destruction, if only to get away from the mess, but it is so generic that there's no reason to care. The story begins with the explosive sabotage of a Russian sub (We never learn who did it or why, because that would mean the movie would have to adhere to some kind of logic) and the torpedoing of a U.S. one off the coast of Russia. Joe Glass (Gerard Butler), the newly appointed captain of the USS Arkansas, and his crew are called in to investigate the disappearance of the American sub. Meanwhile, at the Pentagon, an NSA analyst (played by Linda Cardellini) and a rear admiral (played by Common) go behind the back of Admiral Donnegan (Gary Oldman) to send in the team of SEALs to find out what the Russian president (played by Alexander Diachenko) is up to. That team, led by Bill Beaman (Toby Stephens), witnesses the takeover of the Russian government by the defense minister (played by Michael Gor). The rest of the movie has each section playing out its predictable scenes. The SEALs kill a bunch of Russian soldiers and are killed off one by one in a series of shootouts. The Pentagon folks try to figure out how to end the coup. Some think war is inevitable, and others want to avoid it. Most of the action, though, belongs to the submarine. Those scenes check off each item on the list of things we've come to expect from a story of undersea danger. There's a battle between two subs, in which the captain uses his preternatural understanding of tactics to take out a hidden foe. There's the maneuvering through a minefield, helped along by the rescued captain (played by the late Michael Nyqvist) of the sabotaged Russian sub (The movie even—no kidding here—has Glass tell his Russian counterpart, "We're not so different, you and I," in those exact words). There's the scene where everyone has to keep silent, only for a bunch of things to threaten to make noise, and obviously, there's the scene in which the pressure of the ocean threatens to crush the sub. Such scenes are the standard, but rarely have they seemed so rote. In some respects, Hunter Killer is perfectly mediocre, serviceably giving us everything we anticipate without being overtly dumb about it. This much mediocrity in one sitting, though, eventually starts to wear far too thin. Copyright © 2018 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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