Black Sea

It's rather rare for me to not know of a movie's existence until about four days prior to its release, but that kind of makes sense considering what kind of movie Black Sea is. This may not be a perfect movie, but it's a perfect matinee. Its story is basic and the movie itself has some pacing issues, but the strong performances and several strong scenes make Black Sea a modest success in its own right. What you see in the logline--a submarine pilot gets laid off and recruits others to help him find a Nazi submarine at the bottom of the Black Sea, and their greed and cabin fever begins to turn them against each other--is pretty much it. It's stylishly directed, though, so it more or less works. It's suitably grimy and claustrophobic and actually uses handheld camerawork pretty well. There are several good set pieces that utilize its subterranean, confined setting, even if a few feel kind of excessive. They work, though. Jude Law does good work as a Captain Ahab-esque leader, and the rest do solid work with their only-adequately written parts, namely Michael Smiley from The World's End and Scoot McNairy. The script is the problem here, being not as deep as it could have been (hahaha get it like deep sea lololol). If you want to kill 115 minutes, Black Sea does its job pretty well, and even if you won't remember it in a couple of weeks, it does enough to make it a watchable, and serviceably thrilling matinee. It's not just good, it's good enough. 6.8/10, okay, one thumb (barely) up, (barely) above average, etc.