CRIMSON TIDE
[Spoilers]
A film review by Gregory Bond
Copyright 1995 Gregory Bond
Starring Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington
- A great techno-thriller with some huge plot holes.
Russia has disintegrated into civil war, and the ultra-nationalist rebel leader has captured a far-east submarine base and missile base. U.S. nuclear missile submarines are sent off the Russian Pacific coast as a deterrent. Then the news comes through that the launch codes on the Russian missiles have been compromised and the rebels are threatening to level Japan and North America. So the order is sent out, a pre-emptive strike on the rebel-held missile bases.
Gene Hackman is the Captain of a U.S. Boomer, a good ol' boy redneck, the last of the learn-it-at-sea captains with combat experience, and he eats XOs for breakfast. Denzel Washington is his new XO (Executive Officer, 2nd in command on the Sub), recruited just in time for the emergency deployment, Hackman's previous XO having suffered "appendicitis". Washington is Academy-trained, a Harvard graduate, modern, sensitive, has no combat experience and is as close to a pacifist as you could get in a nuke. So the clash of personalities, politics and morality is signalled well in advance.
These tensions are increased a hundredfold when the order to launch a pre-emptive strike is sent, and explode into boiling point and armed rebellion when, just as the firing is about to start, another order that may or may not be a retraction is garbled in reception. There follows a knife-edge thriller that is basically a two-man play. Here are two men, dedicated to their task, carrying a burden that might just be the end of the world, each believing the other is selling their country into nuclear holocaust. Passions are high and tensions higher, faces sweating and jaws clenched. And we sweat and clench right along with them.
After a bit of scene setting, the remainder of the movie is set inside the boomer. And a perfect location it is. Despite being larger than a WWII-era aircraft carrier, these boats are *cramped*, and the very tight, intimate locations are used to excellent effect to create the high-strung tension. This gives a feeling of tension and claustrophobia that is unmatched since the seminal submarine movie, DAS BOOT. And unlike THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, to which CRIMSON TIDE is inevitably compared, we in the audience really feel like we're sharing a very cramped steel coffin, bringer of Armageddon and target of opportunity.
The two leads do a very credible job. I've liked Hackman since he was Lex Luthor, and if you have fond memories of Superman then you will have a good handle on his character here. Washington seems to be typecast as the sensitive, modern guy, and (to the great credit of the script), the fact that he is black is just not an issue. What is at issue is the whole concept of Nuclear deterrence, and how the chain of command ultimately depends on people. The support cast have few lines and are mainly required to stand around, sweat a lot, and look very, very stressed.
The worst part of the film is that it asks for a *huge* suspension of disbelief, and (despite all they get right), they mess up a lot of technical details they *really* ought to have got correct. I suspect that we are supposed to agree with Washington, consider Hackman to be the villain, and decide that the whole concept of nuclear war is just too horrible to contemplate. But for my money, such moralizing is way too late by the time the launch order comes, and I was on the Captain's side right up until the end. And the ending was a major wimp-out.
In all, A roller-coaster ride and a great techno-thriller.
--
Gregory Bond
SPOILERS:
Some of the things they got wrong (AFAIK - no doubt the sci.military pedants will jump all over me where I am wrong):
>> The opening and closing broadcasts from the French carrier Foch - which they pronounced "foash" rather than "fock" - all the while showing shots of the USS Enterprise! (The Foch is a through-deck carrier with ski-jump; only the U.S. has angled-deck carriers.) It was nice that they at least gave lip service to the rest of the world when they called it a French carrier. And if he really was on the flight deck during launch operations, there is *no way* you would ever hear a word he said - those jets are LOUD!
>> The ELF is just one of the many radios aboard a boomer - it has almost useless bandwith (measured in seconds per character) and is used only to transmit a short (3-character?) message telling the boomer to come up and talk to a satellite. There is no way they get any sort of orders by ELF.
>> And no way that they could decrypt half a message, or have the message blink in and out like a TV with a busted aerial. You either get a message that decrypts or you don't. This was just plain stupid.
>> While I have no access to nuke secrets, I can't believe that the scenario of withdrawing a launch order within 15 minutes of giving it is ever likely, especially to a boomer. The doctrine is basically, once you send a launch order, WW-III is started. If you're not damned sure that you want a war, don't send it! The basic crux on which the whole drama is based is flawed, because the system is set up to assume boomers don't get messages reliably.
>> Given this, I could not believe that Washington's position ("What if they've changed their minds?") is reasonable. They had orders to shoot, and they should have launched. You don't question orders like that in *any* branch of the military.
>> Nor can I believe that this sort of situation isn't covered, in very deep and gory detail, in the training the officers receive.
Not to mention that the conclusion was a terrible cop-out. Being Hollywood, there was little chance that the movie ends with the world being destroyed (even though IMHO a much more powerful ending would be that the missing message is a launch confirmation, and they wind up launching then wondering what happens next). But for the captain to be made out as the villain and for the XO to be promoted for what is in effect mutiny is unbelievable. Being proved right after the fact is no excuse! At the very least he would have been decommissioned.
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