I’ve mentioned many times on this blog my fondness for the novels of Tom Clancy. I was introduced to the books in high school in my sophomore Literary Masterpieces class.
When the movie adaptation of “The Hunt For Red October” was released March 2, 1990, I absolutely loved it, and went on to see it three times in the theater.
(Movie buffs might remember when the movie was first released on home video that the VHS cassette was red.)
In the intervening years, audiences have seen other attempts at “submarine thrillers” like “Crimson Tide” and “K-19: The Widowmaker."
Gerard Butler entered the fray last fall with his pet project “Hunter Killer.” I recently purchased it on Blu-ray (I missed the movie during its theatrical run, but thought the trailers looked cool).
There was apparently a large span of time where "Hunter Killer" sat dormant. It is based on the 2012 novel “Firing Point” by Don Keith and George Wallace.
“This is a movie that is begging to be made and to reinvent,” Butler says on the disc’s special features. “We re-create the submarine genre as well, which I hadn’t seen one of those in a while.”
Here is the setup for “Hunter Killer”:
When the USS Tampa Bay disappears (while tracking a Russian Akula-class sub in the Arctic Ocean), Rear Admiral John Fisk (played by musician Common) dispatches the USS Arkansas (a Virginia-class submarine) from a naval base in Scotland to investigate.
Commander Joe Glass (Butler) is the newly-minted honcho on the Arkansas.
In a parallel storyline, a Navy SEAL team led by Lieutenant Bill Beaman (Toby Stephens from Netflix’s “Lost In Space”) HALO jumps into Russia to conduct surveillance on a naval base located at Polyarny. Defense minister Dmitry Dubrovnik (Mikhail Gorevoy) is planning a coup and takes visiting Russian President Nikolai Zakarin (Alexander Dyachenko) prisoner.
Before long, the Arkansas discovers the missing U.S. submarine, but is attacked by a Russian sub lurking under a nearby iceberg.
The alternating threads in the movie are reminiscent of a Clancy novel. In addition to the “submarine,” “SEAL,” and “military coup” storylines, there is also a thread following the command decisions being made at The Pentagon (Gary Oldman has some key scenes as Admiral Charles Donnegan).
As the pieces move on the foreign policy chess board, Glass & Co. are doing everything in their power to avoid starting World War III.
I won’t go any further into the plot because I don’t want to give anything away.
The movie itself flopped at the box office and received mediocre reviews (I believe it has a 37% rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes). As a result, I was expecting the worst when I sat down and popped the "Hunter Killer" disc into my player.
I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed “Hunter Killer.”
By no means is it the perfect submarine thriller, but I like how it recalls the “Clancy-esque” thrillers of the 1990s.
There were certain sequences where I wondered how “credible” some of the technical aspects of the submarine procedures were. I figured some creative license was taken for dramatic effect.
In the film’s commentary track, director Donovan Marsh talks about how they spent time on an actual military submarine (based at Pearl Harbor) and went out to sea for a day testing the combat scenarios seen in “Hunter Killer.” It sounds like the filmmakers had the cooperation of the U.S. Navy, and every effort was made to bring authenticity to the movie.
“Hunter Killer” does its due diligence as a “techno-thriller.” The film didn’t have the budget many tentpole action movies possess. As a result, certain visual effects aren't as polished as they could be, and some of the green screen work feels awkward, but it is still a handsome production overall.
Gerard Butler is one of my favorite action stars. His film “Olympus Has Fallen” is a terrific action movie (definitely owes a debt to Vince Flynn’s first Mitch Rapp novel “Transfer of Power”).
I get the sense Butler enjoys the breed of thriller novel I grew up reading. “Hunter Killer” was a movie he’d spent a number of years trying to bring to the big screen. I'm glad it finally made it to screen.
I’ll admit that I’m pretty easily amused when it comes to movies. I really enjoyed “Hunter Killer.”
It might not be the perfect military thriller, but it is highly entertaining.
If you like thrillers by Tom Clancy and his ilk, I think you’ll have a good time watching “Hunter Killer.”
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