Hunter Killer
The submarine thriller, “Hunter Killer,” is an exercise in Action Movie Bingo where no cliche goes unused at the service of a generic military adventure with a far-fetched premise. If that type of thing is up your alley, you’ll enjoy this film. I may never watch it again.
The film is based on a novel, but the film takes cues from everything from “The Hunt for Red October” to “Crimson Tide” as the US and Russia reach the brink of war. We start with a US submarine, classification Hunter Killer, near Russian waters on patrol, tailing a Russian sub, when it is attacked from above, and not heard from again. The US government goes into retaliation mode, sending another sub, the USS Arkansas, into the territory to discern what exactly happened. But the submarine and its new commander (played by Gerard Butler) find themselves getting into something more than they expected.
Normally, I would have mentioned the name of Butler’s character in that last paragraph, but I saved it because it’s worth discussing on its own. The name of Butler’s character is Joe Glass, and when he is brought into the movie, he is hunting in Scotland. He hasn’t gone through the typical training to command a submarine, which raises so many more questions, but that name is as ridiculously generic as any I’ve heard in an action movie in a long time, with Butler giving it the weight you would expect. It’s the moment where the film really solidified its B-movie action credentials, which continue to build on one another as the film gets into more convoluted narrative territory. Overall, I can’t fault “Hunter Killer” for what it does, which it does relatively well, nor can I pretend like it has higher aspirations than what it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s as good a film as it could have been- everything is average at best, and ham-fisted at worst. This is very plain action nonsense, and not really worth considering beyond that.
Post-Script: If I don’t mention Gary Oldman, Common or Linda Cardellini here, it’s because they don’t do much to really impact my thoughts on the movie. Same goes for director Donovan Marsh’s work, which feels very generic and serviceable and nothing more. “Hunter Killer” is ok entertainment, nothing more, nothing less.
