Director Kevin Macdonald follows up How I Live Now with his best drama since his 2006 Oscar-flirt The Last King Of Scotland.
Robinson (Law) is a submarine captain made redundant from his salvage company. Given only a meagre severance package, he and two other disgruntled former employees decide to investigate a rumour of German sub was sunk in the Black Sea during WWII and its cargo of gold lost. Putting together a half British-half Russian skeleton crew, with American Daniels (McNairy) there to oversee operations on behalf of the businessman funding the venture, Robinson takes a rusting Soviet sub into the deep. However, with tensions rising between the twitchy Fraser (Menhelsohn) and the grumpy Russians, and with the Russian Navy on the surface listening for any activity below, the crew are up against it…
The debut feature script from Utopia and (the horribly underrated) Pulling writer Ned Kelly might pick and mix from staple characters – the young one, the psycho one, the sick old one, the company man one (McNairy’s Suit is the Carter Burke of the operation), but it all just works and Kelly and Macdonald, who delights in ramping up the cramped confines of the sub, has a few surprise developments up their sleeve too.
Submarine dramas are typically war films, with the possibility of death coming with a sense of duty for king and country, but Black Sea is more relatable as Robinson and co. are just blue collar workers; they are only on this mission out of desperation so the sense of danger, and what will be lost if they fail, is more immediate. In an impressive turn, Jude Law, boasting a strong Scottish accent, is no stiff-upper-lip captain – that his estranged ex Jodie Whittaker and their son moving in with another man weighs heavily on his mind and his desire to acquire the sunken treasure and provide for them pushes the crew into dangerous situations.
There are some bum notes. The translator is killed, which quickly causes a breakdown in communications between the two camps, but then – what a piece of luck – there’s another Russian who speaks perfect English who has kept his bi-lingual talent a secret until now. It’s a sound performance from Menhelsohn again but he’s coming close to being typecast with another psycho turn.
A slow burner that builds to an unnerving climax.