Jamie
When an American submarine sinks and the Russian President is taken hostage in a military coup a new submarine captain Joe Glass is sent to take part in a daring rescue. Will he be able to quell the rebellion and prevent a nuclear war before it’s too late? Find out in… Hunter Killer.
How?! Up in the Barents Sea, American and Russian subs are mysteriously sunk. In a *wink* *wink* coincidence the Russian President is traveling to a naval base sparking a national security crisis in the US. In response, another submarine, the USS Arkansas with its totally green greasemonkey captain Joe Glass, is sent to investigate. He’s all like “thank God I got my lucky coin or else I might be in trouble,” and he flips the coin and smiles at the camera. Simultaneously the US sends in a Special Ops team to check out the naval base and generally waste our time because we don’t care about that storyline. Anyway, when the USS Arkansas gets to the sunk US submarine they find everyone dead, but they hear survivors on the Russian sub. Before they can get them though they are attacked by another Russian sub and only survive through some nifty maneuvers and some help from a lucky coin. With the foe dispatched they are able to rescue the Russian submariners and find that it includes a very prominent Russian captain. Meanwhile, it turns out that there is a coup afoot at the naval base and a totally evil Defense Minister wants to start a war. Uh oh! In order to prevent this tragedy the USS Arkansas is ordered to the naval base to try to rescue the Russian President. Good thing they have that Russian captain on board because otherwise the mission is impossible. Anyway, the Special Ops team goes in guns blazing (obviously) and get the Russian President. They run real fast like Americans and get him into the submarine. As they cruise away, though, they are found by a Russian destroyer and things are looking grim. If only they had someone on board that the Russians loved and respected. Enter the Russian captain and President who are like “please don’t blow us up,” and the destroyer is like “fine.” The Russian Defense Minister is like, “not fine” and shoots giant ballistic missiles at the submarine, but the destroyer somehow knocks them out of the sky and blows up the naval base… which is totally unbelievable until you remember that Captain Glass has that lucky coin. It can do anything. Everyone hugs at the end and each country and their people have new found respect for each other. THE END.
Why?! There isn’t really a why to a lot of the movie. At least on the American side of things. I guess duty to one’s country? The crux of the film is a vast Russian conspiracy aimed at installing the Defense Minister as a de facto dictator. They set up a Russian sub to blow up in the vicinity of an American sub (making it look like an attack) and then attack and destroy the American sub as retaliation. At the same time they sequester the Russian President and start giving order (under the guise that the President is in fact giving the orders himself from the naval base). Once war occurs the Defense Minister will take the reins.
Who?! Obviously musician Common is one of the main actors in the film and that’s great. I’d also like to congratulate President Dover on her election as President of the United States of BMT. It feels like the right time for a change of administration. Finally two people involved in the film died before its release. Michael Nyqvist (who played the Russian Captain Andropov) and a producer John Thompson both died of cancer. Sad.
What?! I was really hoping that Butler’s lucky coin would be used as some kind of Chekov’s lucky coin. Like he gets cornered and distracts someone by flipping it or it stops a bullet or something equally cliche. Alas, it wasn’t to be. It was almost a red herring in how much they built up the lucky coin but he just kind of flips it a few times and it doesn’t even do anything magical. Come on, I want you to use it to plug a hole in the submarine or something.
Where?! A mix of Washington D.C. and Russia (or at least the waters around Russia). Very clear and nicely spelled out with some intertitles. I also want to point out that there was a brief Seal Team training scene in Tajikistan. I would have assumed this would be the only chance for us to get that location but apparently the film Spies Like Us is even more prominently set there. B+.
When?! Always hard in theaters to catch an exact date like this. It might be there (could have even been obviously displayed in the intertitles), but I didn’t catch it and I’ll have to figure it out when I buy the movie on DVD and watch it until the disc wears out. F.
This is a movie for dumb people but sometimes people want to be dumb even if you aren’t dumb, but in fact are big-brain smart people… you know? It has everything I want out of a submarine film: leaks, crush depth, fish in the water, wrenches, people getting crushed by torpedoes, depth charges (in modern day!), long speeches by a submarine captain, a submarine sitting on the ocean floor, a lucky coin, a military coup, things on fire, and a mini sub (babbyyyyyyyy). It is very much like me from the future wrote this fim… wait, did I come from the future and write this film? Anyway, I thought this movie was stupid silly fun that fit perfectly in that 35% RT range (but probably should have been higher?). I unabashedly enjoyed my experience. Oh and it seem like a ripoff of a little known Gary Busey film called Steel Sharks which is weird. And I’m being serious. This film is very similar to that film somehow. Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone. I hunt and I kill bad movies for fun and for reals. I need a hunter killer up in here, let’s get into this BMT Live!!
The Good – The sub action is actually quite good, and comprises enough of the film to make me wonder “wait … did I just like this film” as I left the theater.. I don’t have the vast experiences with sub movies like Jamie, but I found myself extremely entertained in the back half of the film. I agree with most reviews that say this harkens back to some of the late-80s / early-90s idea of what an action film should be. Very self-contained and successful in its limited scope. I liked a good number of the actors involved, even if Gary Oldman did just yell incoherently 95% of the time. I was 100% sure he was going to be a twist bad guy, then he wasn’t, which was a pleasant surprise.
P’s View on the Preview – I had to scramble to get the preview settled, but I became interested partly in the director, who is kind of a strange choice in that he doesn’t seem to have made a big budget US film before. Besides that I’m all about the sub action. The less time I’m on the sub doing sub things the less happy I am.
The Bad – The entire extraction team subplot was pointless. They could have, effectively, done the same thing with a Hollywood satellite handwave and a team from Butler’s sub. Everything was coming up Gerard to a ridiculous degree. He basically flipped 20 coins and they all came up heads, and when people looked at him and were like “how did you know?” he just did a little Michael Jordan shoulder shrug and was like “I didn’t” (but you kind of know he did). You never felt much weight to his decisions because he always made the correct one and it worked out for him flawlessly. To that end basically no one died on the sub which meant there was no drama. And the politics of the film felt off, like originally it was very anti-Russia, but they cut it to go the opposite way to make it semi-pro-Russia realizing the original cut would feel too overtly political.
You Just Got Schooled – I couldn’t find a funny review of the film to watch or anything. But I did find this funny video of Gerard Butler explaining Scottish slang. Seems like a nice guy. But … does anyone else think he has a little bit of a Blake Bortles moonface going? He probably just lays off the beer for a month prior to any role he takes where he needs to actually look … not like Blake Bortles. Actually, have they ever considered having Gerard Butler play Blake Bortles in a biopic?
The BMT – Every Gerard Butler bad movie is a jewel to be treasured in BMT. I have no animosity towards the man, it is just that his action films are often just trite shadows of other action films. And thus they are very often excellent to watch for BMT. The BMeTric is going to go up, that is inevitable, so it’ll be a fine addition, despite the Rotten Tomatoes score being a little higher than we expected.
Welcome to Earf – Michael Nyqvist is both in Hunter Killer and Abduction starring Taylor Lautner, who was in The Ridiculous Six starring Adam Sandler, who was in Jack and Jill with Al Pacino, who was in 88 Minutes with Leelee Sobieski, who was in Here on Earth. Welcome to Earf!! For the record, Butler is also pretty easy as he was in London Has Fallen with Morgan Freeman who has been part of a cycle before.
StreetCreditReport.com – Amazingly there are a few lists that already include this film. Here and here. Otherwise this probably is most famous for being delayed quite a few times. And then again for being the yearly Gerard Butler film that comes out in October and is not very good.
BMT Live Theater Review – I do love my Vue now. I ventured off to the Westfield Vue in Shepherd’s Bush for this viewing and much to my chagrin it cost me 13 pounds. Bah, where is my 5 pound showing Vue?! Anyways, I managed to catch, I think, the third to last showing in London for the film, but there were more people there than I expect. The tension was palpable, with some of the crowd even gasping in shock at some of the more tense moments. Imagine if I actually watched one of these films with like … people in the theater. What a shock that would be. B experience, docked for me not managing to get my 5 pound Monday on, and for lack of a crowd dampening the mood.
Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 