The film follows the 2000 K-141 Kursk submarine disaster and the governmental negligence that followed. As the sailors fight for survival, their families desperately battle political obstacles and impossible odds to save them.
“The Command” follows a group of 23 survivors in the initial explosion of a Russian nuclear submarine named Kursk which sank in August 2000. This story should be ripe for the taking, a Russian submarine needs saving people from all over come to lend a hand and the Russian government is slow to move their feet ending in the 23 men on board all losing their lives. This is cinematic gold, however, the movie falls flat and struggles to grip the viewer and make any lasting connection between the characters. For some reason, the aspect ratio changes throughout the movie. I can understand when this could be used as a tool but this trick seems to not add anything to the story at all. It’s as though the director got tired of shooting one way and wanted to shoot in another.
The film doesn’t do anything new that we haven’t seen before although it could have. The director named Vladamir Putin in the regular script but in the final version, the character was nowhere to be seen. He had been replaced with the ominous “suits,” which felt like a cop-out and a cliché. The emotion in the sub could have been something to remember and although no one knows the details about what happened in the frigid waters the film makes the 23 crewmen almost faceless. There is no way to connect with these men who are slowly losing oxygen at the bottom of the ocean and that should be the easiest thing to do in a film such as this.
A movie like this should be charged emotionally, a powder keg which, when it explodes, causes conversation that ripples throughout but it burns past its fuse and then never goes off.
Available on Blu-ray™ Combo Pack (plus DVD and Digital), DVD, and Digital August 6th
