Has anyone else seen this film?

It seems to have been a pretty low key release. Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson are the two big names, and while their Russian accents are horrible in parts, I can forgive this.

K-19 is based off a true story, set at the height of the Cold War, the USA has already launched it's first SSBN, the USS George Washington, Russia obviously doesn't want to be left behind, and intends to launch the nuclear powered K-19.

The film starts with what looks like a bad situation with the K-19 undertaking a missile preparation, things go wrong and there's suddenly a torpedo attack which suceeds.

Fortunately for the K-19's crew, this is all a drill, but it shows up the shortcomings of both boat and crew, and Ford's Capt Alexei Vostrikov is brought in to replace Neeson's more fatherly Capt Polenin. This doesn't sit well with the crew, and the tension between the two men is obvious.

Even the launch ceremony doesn't go well, the champagne bottle failing to smash (a traditional sign of bad luck), shortly afterwards the ships doctor gets killed, and the old base doctor is brought in instead who knows nothing about radiation related sicknesses. The ships reactor officer is caught sleeping on duty and drunk and dismissed, replaced by a fresh graduate from reactor school.

To sum up the movie, Ford puts the vessel and crew through their paces with drill after drill including crash dives, simulated compartment fires, floods and then the penultimate missile test fire arrives and everything seems to go ok.

However, later on there is a fault in the reactor, the cooling system has been damaged and the overrides are not working. This results in the crew having to do ad hoc work on the reactor with inadequeate equipment.

I'll not put any more spoilers in now.

My opinion of this is that the movie is really well done if a little slow paced in parts. It's good to see a story of this type from the SOviet POV and highlights the problems that early nuclear subs had (Britain's Resolution class SSBN's also suffered from problems).

The accompanying soundtrack was very appropriate to the mood of the film.

All in all if you like Hunt for Red October, Crimson Tide and similiar films, I'd recommend this.