Fri 5 Feb 2021
BLACK SEA. Focus Features, UK, 2014; US, 2015. Jude Law, Scoot McNairy, Konstantin Khabensky, Bobby Schofield. Screenwriter: Dennis Kelly. Director: Kevin Macdonald.
I am caught between calling this a heist film, or a hunt for buried treasure one. No matter, because it includes the best elements of both. When a recently fired underwater salvage captain (a perfectly cast grizzled and determined Jude Law) learns about the possible existence of a Nazi U-Boat from World War II that was sunk off the coast of Georgia with a cargo of gold ingots, he sees a chance to get back at the company that released him, get back in touch with his estranged son, and not the least of these, if all goes well, he’ll be set financially for the rest of his life.
The sunken ship is in contested waters, though, and the surface is constantly being patrolled by Russian ships. More, the submarine he’s able to purchase, through the aid of a mysterious benefactor, is old and decrepit, and the crew he finds is half English and half Russian, five of each.
The reward, however, is staggering, running in the hundreds of millions of dollars, to shared equally.
Obviously things do not go well. They never do in the movies. Only one of the Russians speaks English, for example, and tensions quickly spill over the top, violently so. But with so much money at stake, antagonisms are finally smoothed over. The underground U-Boat is found, entered, and the gold … well, there’s a small problem there. It weighs more than a few pounds.
Lots of risky maneuvering ensues, including that of the submarine itself through a rocky trench in the ocean bed, anger between the disparate members of crew flares up again and again, a huge double cross is discovered, explosions shake the ship with water rushing in, and well, how well do either heists or treasure hunts ever go in the movies? There’s lots of fun watching this to find out. If this sounds like your kind of movie, it is. This one is a good one.
February 5th, 2021 at 2:54 pm
” the gold … well, there’s a small problem there. It weighs hundreds of tons.”
They only realise that gold worth hundreds of millions of dollars will weigh hundreds of tons after they find it?
Could a WWII U-boat carry hundreds of tons of gold anyway? Most of them only weighed a few hundred tons themselves
February 5th, 2021 at 3:10 pm
Well, I confess I was paraphrasing there when I was talking about the weight. With your permission, but keeping this on record, I’m going to go back and change that to “weighs more than a few pounds.”
February 5th, 2021 at 9:55 pm
I wasn’t quite as impressed, but up to a certain point it works very well. Like a lot of modern films it doesn’t really offer anyone much I was rooting for and that put me off a bit.
February 5th, 2021 at 10:25 pm
I guess I’m a sucker for this kind of movie. I’m always rooting for them to get away with it, even though I know they probably won’t, and whether they deserve to or not.
February 6th, 2021 at 5:15 am
In fact – doing belated research – a (US) ton of gold was worth $46.5 million in 2019, so when the film was made it wouldn’t be worth much less and only a few tons would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
There’d still be the problems of getting it on the submarine and storing it there (a ton of gold could be stored in a 14″ cube) without shifting the sub’s balance.
February 6th, 2021 at 9:38 am
Thanks for working out the math, Roger. Makes sense to me!
February 6th, 2021 at 8:38 am
Another one for the “find it and watch it” list. Thanks, Steve!
February 6th, 2021 at 2:02 pm
Dan, it is available on Netflix.