Sub Down (1997)

Wonderful character development!

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Blistering performances.

The acting in this movie is really good.

... They want you as a new recruit And if that Village People anthem didn`t get you to sign up to join the navy what chance has SUB DOWN ? No chance really There`s rather a lot of problems with this movie . One is having Stephen Baldwin as an action hero . Personally speaking I think Mike Baldwin from CORONATION STREET has a better than even chance of becoming an action hero , and according to folklore it`s bad luck to have a woman on a boat . Considering she`s played by Gabrielle Anwar that`s bad luck for the entire movie too not to mention the audience But the thing that annoyed me was the script . Check this out : A trio of environmentalists get a trip on a nuclear submarine . The submarine crashes and the environmentalists have to save the day . Yeah I`m sure the US navy are so overjoyed about being asked that they`re going to allow a bunch of greenies on their ship , ( I`m sure the Pentagon have been overwhelmed by Greenpeace members asking if they can go to Iraq to do research into depleted uranuim ) though to be fair there`s a lot of environmentalists who`d like to be stuck on a sub with a lot of sex starved sailors , none of whom are female .Oh and the script is terribly slow , it`s about a third of the way through before anything actually happens and until it does we have to put up with lots of techno-babble which will be of absolute no interest to anybody . It shows you how bad a movie is when you start wishing both a bunch of terrorists AND Steven Seagal would turn up to enliven the scenes SUB DOWN is one of those movies that`s credited as having Alan Smithee as director ( ie the director didn`t want his real name to be listed ) but the director here can be forgiven for the most part since it`s obvious the budget - Like the script - wasn`t up to much , so the relatively unspectacular crash doesn`t deserve a tirade of criticism . The only thing the director can be blamed for ( Apart from casting Baldwin and Anwar - That goes without saying ) is a scene where a torpedo works loose and slides towards a sailor`s head , unfortunately the shot cuts away before you see his head get squashed . Oh well . I do congratulate the director for including a really funky tune in the opening credits because if it wasn`t for that I might have given SUB DOWN one out of ten but I`ll give the movie two out of ten

This is a great film. Easy to watch, no dull moments, good suspense. The Baldwins can sometimes do rubbish films, but in this case in no way did this come across as a B movie, even though I'm sure the budget intended it to be. Just watch it.

A good example of mediocre writing, poor editing and how people can really screw up even a so-so idea. Acting wasn't great, story is tired and frankly unbelievable if you have any basic understanding of how subs work. Don't bother unless you're 15 or younger and really don't have anything else to do with your time. Frankly, it really works better on fast forward.

In my opinion this is the best submarine movie. It is suspenseful, has a good dialogue (check the quotes section), characters to care about, and good acting (great as ever: Gabrielle Anwar). The only thing that I missed in this movie was a Hans Zimmer score. See this movie, it's worth it! (my vote: 10/10)