Dollar movie stalwart Gerard Butler leads a US submarine and narrowly avoids nuclear war with (crooked) Russia during a Siberian military coup in 2018’s Hunter Killer. This movie, for obvious political reasons, was explicitly banned in Ukraine, and was soft-banned in Russia via bogus bureacratic reasons–but here in the good ol’ USA it merely bombed. Our beloved Antoine Fuqua dropped out of this one, perhaps saving his reputation in the process.
But I wouldn’t call this a bad movie. Rather, it felt very much like a 2-hour Tom Clancy novel, and in fact it was based on somebody else’s military slick fiction. There seemed to be…..and I don’t know whether this originated at the book level or the film level, but…there seemed to be MANY apparent ripoffs of The Hunt for Red October (and yet none from Down Periscope? a missed opportunity!). Yet despite my typical enjoyment of such military movies, I have no choice but, like Immortan Joe, to declare Hunter Killer mediocre.
The mediocrity of this flick is tragic, because it has (superficially?) dollar elements we usually love: inside jobs, military coups, evil Russians, black ops missions. But otherwise, it was a typical submarine movie–well, what is a “typical” submarine movie? I guess it’s the kind of movie you would EXPECT a submarine movie to be: will a kid drop a wrench when they’re all supposed to be quiet? Yup! Will there be a subordinate who keeps telling the captain he’s crazy? Of course! Will there be a huge leak that endangers several unnamed young crewmen? I think you know the answer.
Gary Oldman, perhaps thinking about what he’ll do with his paycheck
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gary Oldman (barely in it despite second billing) shrieked warmongering stuff the whole time–I was POSITIVE he’d end up crooked (and in-on-it with the Russian coup leader), but sadly his character wasn’t even THAT interesting. (The first time we see Oldman, he’s laboriously dropping alka-seltzer tablets into a glass while army guys explain the dangerous situation…second time, he enters the shot zipping up his fly for NO reason!) I could have sworn that Oldman started with a Southern accent that disappeared by the end of the film, but I dunno. Naturally, there was a war-room scene where he yelled counsel at the President–the person they cast as the (unnamed) POTUS looked and sounded almost identical to Hillary Clinton.
What really torpedoes this flick is that there are no personalities: basically every character is interchangeably cardboard, even Gerard Butler’s “Joe Glass” to some extent. I think we noted the same problem in the Rock’s 2018 pabulum Skyscraper….and character development, or even just fleshing out all the characters with memorable little details, was a thing that The Hunt for Red October did VERY well. The flick features not one but TWO veterans from the John Wick universe, the late Michael Nyqvist and Common (whose dollar stock is rising lately, it seems), but they provided nothing other than a little dollar gravitas (and one semi-funny “Fuck you.”)
Michael Nyqvist and Gerard Butler, wishing this movie were Crimson Tide instead
Ol’ Gerry Butler, who executive produced, adds some “look how cool my character is” lines that would make Will Smith blush. As Joe Glass walks through the sub, the rookie sailors converse: “I heard he’s a genius”…”I heard he once punched out his commanding officer”…”I heard he bangs a hot chick in every port!” In fact, we first meet Glass on shore leave in the Scottish highlands (near Butler’s hometown–nice and LAZY) as he’s about to shoot a stag…with a bow and arrow…on the other side of a lake no less. But just before releasing the arrow, he puts the bow down when he sees–the stag’s WIFE AND CHILD trot up (I mean, this isn’t explicit, but it’s pretty clear you’re meant to understand it’s a deer nuclear family). Does this moment of heavy-handed symbolism foreshadow the end of the film? …I think you know the answer.
Other dollar elements….I don’t know much about the specifics of submarine warfare, so I can’t really tell whether the movie was full of bullshit or not, but I’m pretty sure that it was unrealistic to have multiple characters swimming in the Arctic Circle with just wetsuits on (or, at one point, even no protection.) Also, when the submarine makes its first dive down into the water, it sure does look like the actors are all just leaning backwards to simulate the sub diving down (not unlike simulating a Buick being driven into space by leaning back into your seat?).
There WAS one good death (a likely “Best Death” nominee at the end-of-year awards), in which a wounded soldier commits suicide (and saves his buddies) by pulling the pins of two grenades with his middle fingers and using them to flip off the incoming villains before they all blow up.
Final verdict: I ultimately think Hunter Killer is worth one dollar…it’s recommended for fans of submarine thrillers/military problem-solving movies. Serviceable at best, but disappointingly forgettable.