Review of Hunter Killer (2018) by Meritcoba — 01 Dec 2019

Curiously I enjoyed this movie even though it could have been improved with some better writing. It would have been much better to focus on the conflict between the new submarine commander and his XO which would then reach boiling point as the tension rises. This would have required to flesh both men out more and this time could have been found by removing much of the scenes in the US. There is also too much time given to the special ops team. It would have been much better if the team actually was a navy seal team that operated from the submarine. In that way the focus would have been on the sub all the time and there would have been less time needed to introduce people and the leader of the seals could be another guy with a stake in the conflict between the captain and his xo.

I find the movie also weak because it paints the Russians in a negative light. For while the US commander never fires first, never on his own men and never on the Russians even when he would need to save his own ship, the Russians have no issue to shoot, execute and blow up their own men. It turns them in cardboard bad guys.

I also think that it would also have been better if they had focused the conflict between the Russian destroyer and the US submarine. I recall the haunting scene in Das Boot. It could have been introduced as the latest in anti-submarine warfare at the start of the movie and be the reason why the Russian president was there. In that way you have a build up and a pay off. Now it just appears suddenly.

The most problematic story element is however the motivation of the Russian bad-guy. There is no effort to give him a good reason, give him a good background and make him so we can understand him as a person. It would have been easy to do, by having the Russian president be responsible for cut it the defense budget for instance. Stating that the Russian destroyer would be the last of its kind and all the other builds cancelled. The bad-guy then could have been given a personal stake in this. Maybe he fears that his country would become weak. Or maybe he has issue with the US submarine commander, or maybe he is an old buddy. Just something that makes him into a person instead of a puppet.

The biggest issues in this movie is that it doesn't concentrate on the central story and it fails to give us characters we can connect with. All in all what you get is a mediocre thriller. If you are really into submarines then I am sure you are better off watching Das Boot or The Hunt for Red October.