In Theaters and Digital

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The first clue that there’s a serious problem with Todd Robinson’s (Lonely Hearts) Cold War-era submarine thriller Phantom, comes just as the first lines of dialogue are uttered.

Captain Demi (Ed Harris), an aging U-boat commander during the height of the Soviet Union military build-up, is being given his last command on an equally rusty diesel submarine before both are moth-balled and replaced by a younger and more modern fleet of “atom smashers." As his commander (Lance Henriksen) reluctantly commissions Demi for his next deployment, we’re snapped to a distracting attention as both speak in jarring American accents. In all fairness, it’s certainly up for debate as to whether the abysmal Russian accents offered by Harrison Ford in K-19: The Widowmaker or Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October would be more of a distraction than simply abandoning regional dialect altogether as Robinson has done. Regardless, it runs so counter to what we initially expect, it takes some getting used to. Plus those films had enough good stuff going on to make us quickly forget. This one doesn’t.

Our second troubling moment comes as the team loads up the sub and heads for deep water while Robinson’s camera begins to snake its way through the cramped halls and narrow portholes of the creaky vessel. Success in submarine movies begins with the panicky tension created by the claustrophobic feel of being sandwiched in a crowded metal tube with barely enough room to turn around. The threat of the thing at any moment throwing her bolts and giving up the ghost at the bottom of the Pacific is mostly missing here, even though there’s the prerequisite scene of the captain nervously taking her below crush depth in an effort to elude detection. 1981’s Das Boot did this better, and even K-19 managed the effect, but it’s sadly missing in Phantom.

The most interesting aspect of Phantom isn’t actually what takes place on the screen, but rather what happened in the true story which spawned Robinson’s speculative script. Declassified details of a Soviet sub that went missing some time back in the 1960s have yet to reveal what really went down, but Robinson’s story, which likely borders on complete fiction, tells us that the Soviets are testing some kind of new underwater cloaking technology when an enigmatic head of the KGB (David Duchovney) goes rogue and takes over the nuclear-armed ship with his own malicious agenda.

While we’ll likely never know what really caused the sub to disappear, closing credits reveal that a nuclear missile may have been launched by the Soviets and subsequently recovered, unexploded, on the ocean floor by the U.S. Military. It’s also hinted at that the incident actually brought us closer to war with the Soviet Union than did the Cuban Missile Crisis. Unfortunately, we’re never made to feel that intensity. There’s certainly a compelling story in there somewhere, and one that deserves the creative attention of Hollywood filmmakers. But this isn’t it.

Ed Harris is fun to watch as the boat’s captain whose shady past is slowly revealed in a series of glaringly out-of-place flashbacks, William Fichtner fits the bill nicely as his first mate, and Duchovney, though seriously miscast here, exudes the necessary venom as a villain bent on starting World War III. Though the ship is nicely appointed as a grand, moaning, steam-punk machine, replete with hissing valves, oily analog gauges, and of course the requisite shiny brass periscope with the folding handles, the vessel is filmed so flatly that it never becomes the soul-crushing character it should.

Actors do their thing, and we do our best with a fictionalized premise that verges on laughable, but in the end, Phantom is simply not a very well made movie - torpedoed by its technical shortcomings. And even in the under-served sub genre, it’s just mediocre at best.[/tab]

[tab title="Film Details"]

MPAA Rating: R for violence.
Runtime: 97 mins.
Director: Todd Robinson.
Writer: Todd Robinson.
Cast: Ed Harris; David Duchovney; William Fichtner; Lance Henriksen
Genre: War | Military | Drama
Tagline: You'll never see it coming.
Memorable Movie Quote: "My crew has just returned from 76 days at sea. There must be a dozen boats better rested."
Distributor: RCR Distribution
Official Site: phantomthefilm.com
Release Date: March 1, 2013
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: No details available.

Synopsis: Ed Harris plays the captain of a Cold War Soviet missile submarine who has secretly been suffering from seizures that alter his perception of reality. Forced to leave his wife and daughter, he is rushed into a classified mission, where he is haunted by his past and challenged by a rogue KGB group (led by David Duchovny) bent on seizing control of the ship's nuclear missile. With the fate of humanity in his hands, Harris discovers he’s been chosen for this mission in the belief he would fail. Phantom is a suspense submarine thriller about extraordinary men facing impossible choices.[/tab]

[tab title="Blu-ray Review"]

No details available.[/tab]

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