31 Oct 2018

Movie review: Hunter Killer

From At The Movies, 7:31 pm on 31 October 2018

Hunter Killer is like an old-fashioned airport book, circa 1980, turned into a B-movie.

It is in many ways a story from an alternative reality 2018 - and I suspect it was made, or at least cast, a few years ago.

Hunter Killer

Hunter Killer Photo: Supplied

This is a world with a decent Russian president anxious to do the right thing, with a female American President who thinks before she acts, and a general feeling of respect between people, no matter what their politics.

So, plenty of suspension of disbelief required in the actual 2018 we live in.

The story opens with two submarines - Russian and American - tracking each other under the Arctic Ocean. Then suddenly they're both blown up by person or persons unknown. In Washington, Rear Admiral John Fisk goes to his boss, Gary Oldman.

I'm not sure which is less plausible - Oldman as a high-up figure in the American State Department, or rapper and journeyman support actor Common being promoted to Admiral.

Either way, they need to find another submarine - a "Hunter Killer" in the jargon - to find out what's going on.

Enter Joe Glass, played by B Movie stalwart Gerard Butler. These days Scotsman Butler is the go-to guy for biggish, rather limited movies.

Sometimes he's the action hero, sometimes he's the rather lunkish lead in a romantic comedy, he's even played The Phantom of the Opera. But one thing never changes - the essential stupidity of anything with him in it.

Back in Washington another figure arrives on the scene: TV actor - and pretty much sole woman in Hunter Killer - Linda Cardellini, roped in on thankless exposition duty as a CIA high-up, Jayne Norquist.

Norquist suspects there's politics behind the scenes and under the ice.

As luck would have it, there was a camera pointed at the Russian President at the precise moment his entourage is mostly wiped out and he's kidnapped by a rogue cabinet minister.

Admiral Common is there to let us know what's going on, while Oldman sets out the film's mission.

So it seems Butler will steer his Hunter Killer sub into Cold War enemy territory, while a small commando unit will do the actual presidential snatch.

Leader of the commandos is Dame Maggie Smith's son, Toby Stephens. Are there no actual Americans in the entire US armed forces?

Hunter Killer is a Cold War action thriller of the old school with one major difference.

Back in the Seventies and Eighties, the cast would have been stuffed with A List stars, if only to keep the audience from getting confused by all these chaps in military uniform.

Despite the best efforts of Butler - Oldman mostly phones it in, and who can blame him? - Hunter Killer is about as B-movie as it gets, with characters who struggle to flesh out their parts to wafer dimensions.

There's a noble Russian captain with very few lines - sadly the last part played by Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's Michael Nykvist, who died shortly afterwards - and a brief appearance by an American president who looks - wishful thinking, I'm afraid - like Hilary Clinton.

Maintaining the tone-deafness of Hunter Killer, the Russian President is noble and democratic - the sort of chap to make you think "if only".

I know, there's no reason why a military thriller should be anything more than an escapist entertainment. But the line between "fiction" and "flat-out lying" needn't be quite as blurred as this.

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