First Hit: Jude Law was great, the film lacked gripping drama and action.
There is a scene when they are pulling the gold across the bottom of the ocean floor and there was nothing that made all this compelling. This was the problem with the whole film; the setups and results were lackluster.
Captain Robinson (Law) did his best to make all this work but it wasn’t enough to carry the film. In essence this film is about working class people trying to find a way to use their skills to get something back. This group of men British and Russian decide to locate a sunken German U2 submarine that is carrying ~80 million dollars’ worth of gold. The crew is motley and they may or may not be trustworthy.
The film explores this with a few choice characters and script choices. Most of the film takes place in an old sub, therefore the sets are limited but they were wonderfully detailed.
Law brings a wonderfully full and expressive character. His maturation as an actor really shows here and I found myself very drawn into his character. All the other actors we OK including; Ben Mendelsohn, Tobias Menzies, Grigoriy Dobrygin, Michael Smiley, Karl Davies, and Konstantin Khabenskiy. Dennis Kelly wrote the plodding script. Kevin Macdonald directed this, and as with most underwater movies, it was dark.
Overall: Law was the film.