A few good men
By Michael Horowitz
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Crimson Tide is a taut, white-knuckle sub thriller that will
make you chew your fingers off. And then, with out any digits, you
will be unable to point out problems in this film.
The marketing campaign for this flick hasn’t been overly
concerned with distancing it from The Hunt for Red October, the red
sub posters, the similar footage, the cold war themes. And given
the present poor state of the action genre, excepting Bad Boys, a
two-guys-yelling-at-a-bunch-of-soldiers-with-guns film wouldn’t
seem on the surface an easy sell. This isn’t the same America that
went apeshit over Bruckheimer and Simpson’s Top Gun back in the
Reagan era.
Yet this picture is one of the best underseas actioners yet, a
compliment to the big-budget adventures of years past, and a master
of the genre conventions. The fact that two of the best living
actors, Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman, are the pivotal stars
is gravy.
The latter is the captain of the sub, ordered to send his ship
on a mission during a world crisis where a rebel Russian leader has
acquired control of nuclear missiles. The fate of the free world,
mom, apple pie and all that schtick are dependent on their sub’s
ability to follow its orders from U.S. high command.
Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be too much of a problem. Hackman’s
character lives for orders, and Washington’s has been trained all
his life to accept them. So the first order comes in.
They’re told to launch their missiles at Russia. No big deal.
They begin to surface. Then another order starts to come in and
it’s interrupted before they can read it. Quickly a debate begins
over the proper course of action: should they obey the first order
or try and acquire the second?
Needless to say, debate and discussion aren’t the strong suits
of the military, but yelling and waving guns around are. So we get
the verbal, physical, and mental battles waged plus the clarion of
sub warfare, the torpedo sequence.
This is all filmed very, very well. Tony Scott, master of
filming things that move fast (planes in Top Gun, cars in Days of
Thunder, roller coasters in True Romance), makes the constantly
maneuvering submarine feel like caged hell. Sweat and steam fill
the crevices between angry crew members, breathing room is nowhere
to be found.
Washington and Hackman are so practiced and perfect at their
well-fitting roles that they radiate intensity in their
confrontations. While it would have been ultimately more compelling
had the film shown less bias to their characters, audience
sympathies do not reside completely with either. Crimson Tide could
have walked a finer line between good and evil, but the film’s path
is admirable for its genre.
At the end of the day, it’s an action film, and it delivers.
Special bonus to Tarantino fans: due to his polish of Crimson
Tide, the filmmaker’s signature dialogue permeates the subspeak.
Everything you think was written by Tarantino is written by
Tarantino, and he is personally responsible for such gems as
Hackman’s comment on high school girls: "They’re instinctive.
They’re dumb as fenceposts, but they know all the boys want to fuck
’em." Ah, Quentin, your pen is truly more powerful than your
acting.
FILM: Crimson Tide. Directed by Tony Scott. Starring Gene
Hackman, Denzel Washington. Grade: A-