This is one of the best sub movies of all time, and shows courage and comraderie that lies with the Soviet Sailors who work in the worst of conditions, and also reveals that when the going gets tough, the irresponsible that are way up high cover it up!!

A real-life historical incident becomes the basis for this military thriller from director Kathryn Bigelow that's reminiscent of such submarine dramas as Das Boot (1981), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Crimson Tide (1995), and U-571 (2000). Harrison Ford stars as Captain Alexi Vostrikov, a Russian naval officer who's being given command of the Soviet Union's first nuclear submarine, K-19, at the height of the Cold War in 1961.

The vessel's previous commander, Captain Mikhail Polenin (Liam Neeson) has been demoted to executive officer following a botched test and his outspoken assertions that the flagship is not yet ready for deployment, but he curbs his resentment and resolves to serve his new superior well. Polenin's concerns are well founded: parts are not yet installed, equipment is missing, and the ship's doctor is killed in an auto mishap. Political pressure forces Vostrikov to sail his crew into the North Atlantic anyway, for a missile fire test that serves as a warning to the U.S. that its enemy is now its technological equal.

The test is a success, but a disastrous leak in the K-19's reactor cooling system soon threatens to create enough heat to detonate the craft's nuclear payload - which would certainly be mistaken for the first salvo in a worldwide atomic exchange and spark the beginning of World War III. With no other option, Vostrikov orders his men to repair the damage in ten-minute shifts, irradiating them hopelessly. The conflict between the seemingly bureaucratic Communist Vostrikov and the more humane Polenin escalates, until a surprising twist reveals where both officers' loyalties truly lie.

The Widowmaker - even before it was launched, it killed ten of its own crew and construction crew. Under-built, under-supplied, under-staffed, the K-19 submarine hovered on the edge of disaster every minute it was afloat.

Then it fell over the edge.

This is a movie about soldiers fighting a Cold War that was very real to them, as real as the torpedo in the cradle they sat next to. Their mission was sabotaged from the start, by the very political leaders they served, by the belief that political purity would overcome any failure of physical resources. (An offhand joke partway through said it all - about a cosmonaut whose air supply failed, and who wasn't loyal enough to the party to hold his breath.) Still, they did their jobs as soldiers, even walking into sure and painful death to save the rest of their crew.

This movie is a remarkable contrast to actual Cold War movies. The submarine crew is drawn sympathetically. Harrison Ford's character is a little deeper than the others, poised between party loyalty, a military sense of honor and duty, and a fatherly view of his crew.

This isn't the most complex role Ford has ever played. Still, he plays it well, as one expects. There is a bit of a coincidence, though. Ford is well on his way to being a grand old man of movies, much as Sean Connery has. Connery did his Russian submarine movie (Hunt for Red October), now Ford has done his. Is there some kind of a checklist that I don't know about?

This is a good movie. It's a look from the post-Soviet era back into the Cold War - however little shooting there may have been, it was a war nonetheless and this is a war movie. It doesn't glorify war, quite the opposite, but it does honor the soldiers stuck with the job of fighting it.

//wiredweird

This film is an experience, watching it thinking that its based on something that happened is impressive. It is also nice to have a movie that doesn't need standard-hollywoody violence and action sequences.
But why do I give only 3 stars to it? Its because afterwards I made some investigation, the movie made me curious, and so I found that the surviving crewmembers in russia are not pleased with it. K-19 navigator Valentin Shabanov, 62, said: "Only two things in the film are true: the bottle of champagne did not break when the submarine was launched and yes, there was an accident with the reactor. The rest are tales from Uncle Sam."

So when I see in the DVD specials Ms. director and her staff doing such detailed research and work, going to russia and practically rebuild a submarine in US, saying all the time how important it was to get everything as real as possible, how can they blow up all their efforts by not telling the real story. Now knowing that the story is not accurate, the movie is worthless to me.

This is a great movie and is far superb to U-571. The story is exellent and just about everything is exellent. I recommend this to any submarine movie collector or just a person who likes a good story.

Veteran actors Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson star in this thrilling film about a Russian nuclear submarine and its crew during the height of the cold war. Ford stars as Captain Alexi Vostrikov, a by-the-book, bend and no break commander of the Russian submarine K-19. Neeson stars as Captain Mikhail Polenin. Polenin is the exact opposite of Vostrikov. He is well liked by the crew and is willing to take advice from them.

The K-19 is the newest is Russian submarine technology. Capable of firing missiles up and down the American coast, the submarine and its crew set off on their maiden training mission.
The crew successfully fires the test missile, but soon another problem develops. The crew soon realizes that their nuclear reactor which powers the ship has developed a severe leak which threatens to possibly destroy the ship.

Volunteers are chosen to go inside the reactor area to try to fix the leak by welding pipes to bypass the leak, but these men soon are suffering from radiation exposure. Meanwhile, an American destroyer has come upon the crippled sub and has offered assistance. Vostrikov is determined not to seek help from the "enemy" Americans, and the K-19 does manage to contact another Russian sub and the crew is transferred.

I thought this was a very good movie. Neeson and Ford do very good jobs as the Russian captains, although I didn't care too much for the fake Russian accents. The special effects, especially the underwater shots of the K-19 are excellent. I've been a fan of submarine movies for a long time, and I rate this movie alongside others such as "U-574", "Crimson Tide", and "The Hunt for Red October". It is full of excitement and will definitely captivate you throughout.