Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49606 in DVD
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Format: NTSC
• Original language: English, Russian

Amazon.co.uk Review
An intense dramatisation of a long-suppressed Cold War anecdote, K-19: The Widowmaker is the first big Hollywood film to view the conflict through a Soviet periscope, casting Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson (with slight accents) as patriotic Russians.

In 1961, as NATO deploys long-range nuclear attack submarines, the Kremlin forces the Russian Navy to follow suit, whether they're ready or not. Ford takes over from popular skipper Neeson in command of the eponymous submarine, riding the men hard through a missile test, and then coping with an escalating series of crises as a jerry-built reactor threatens to melt down (and perhaps start World War III).

Though the political specifics are fresh, this has all the expected elements of a sub movie, citing everything from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Das Boot to Crimson Tide and The Caine Mutiny as sailors bristle mutinously under a marine martinet. This, along with inept engineering and ideological interference, prompts disaster.

Director Kathryn Bigelow, the most undervalued talent in Hollywood, is in her element with heroic men under pressure, and a terrific central stretch has comrades trying to fix the reactor even though they've been given the wrong protective gear and start coming down with radiation sickness as they work. Less successful is a superfluous epilogue that pulls the old Spielberg present-day-reunion-of-the-aged-survivors-at-a-gravesite gambit. --Kim Newman

Customer Reviews

Great Suspense Throughout The Movie
K19, the Widow Maker is a suspense full movie that keeps you guessing the outcome. Your emotions that calls for anger turns into applause and in the final outcome you realize that people, also people that are on the other side are worthy of their courage, their dedication, loyalty and honor to their Nation.

we came close to destruction that time
This is a well crafted, true story and Exposition of the cold war submariners' duties. The unusual thing is that the Russians are depicted as the good guys. The editing, as signified by the pace of the film is superbly done. The claustrophobic aspects of the ship could have been boring but it was not the case. The two captains are shown as mutually distrusting at first but under duress begin to see the others point of view under the weight of an unreliable and dangerous vessel.

The 'rights and wrongs' of politics are left aside and the crews lives are shown during this catastrophic failure.
Both Alice and I enjoyed this film. It was shown to a Russian audience of Sea fairer and had mixed reviews.

the real story was somewhat different
There is something basically wrong with this film. For those who know the real story of K19, the film should have been a scathing indictment of the Communist system. Instead of that, what the film conveys is feelings of horror about the Cold War and nuclear energy. It is true that, from a technical point of view, the accident is shown as it happenend, and the submarine is shown as it was. However, the two strong, courageous, Communist captains played by Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson simply never existed. The real captain of K19, a Captain Nikolai Zateev, was an irresponsible, devil-may-care officer. He started the reactor ashore in conditions that would never have been tolerated in any Western navy - not even bothering to have pressure gauges installed for the vital primary coolant system. As a result, as the inquiry later determined, the coolant pipes were overtressed and one of them ruptured at sea, as shown in the film. As in the film, the captain did not radio Fleet Command immediately - but not, as in the film, because the radio was broken. The true reason was that he hoped he could fix the problem at sea and avoid an inquiry that could send him straight to the gulag. It was only when it became all too clear that the accident could not be hidden that he radioed Fleet Command. As in the film, seven seamen died in the first few days back to base, and many others later. It was only the first accident of K19. Incredible as it may seem, the Soviet navy did not decommision K19, and, in 1972, a fire onboard killed 28 seaman. Another good movie could be made about the second accident. By then, K19 had a competent captain, Viktor Kulibaba, who lived to see the end of Commnunism - but by that time, he was paralyzed by the effects of radiations.
As for this film, the submarine is well recreated, but the film is simply too biased.