“Salvador” is an Oliver Stone (“Platoon”) film. He co-wrote
it with Richard Boyle. The main character is based on Boyle, although the movie
begins with a disclaimer that the characters have been fictionalized. The movie
cost $4.5 million. Stone had trouble getting financial backing and had to take
out a second mortgage on his home. You can’t fault his commitment to telling
the story, but it was a box office bomb, making only $1.5 million. The movie
got good reviews. Not a surprise since critics love movies about journalists.
It was nominated for Best Actor (James Woods) and Best Original Screenplay.
Woods plays
veteran journalist Boyle. He is a stereotype of a war movie journalist. His
situation is straight out of a country music song. He is unemployed, evicted,
his wife and child have left him, and he has been arrested for numerous traffic
violations. He hooks up with a down on his luck disc jockey called Doctor Rock
(Jim Belushi) whose wife has kicked him out and his dog has died. They decide
to drive to El Salvador because it is in the middle of a civil war and it is a
good place for adrenaline junkies to get a fix. And they can make some money
doing free lance work. In El Salvador, they hook up with photojournalist John
Cassady (John Savage) who like all of this type in movies, heads in the
direction of gunshots. There is a subplot that has Boyle attempting to save a
girlfriend and her daughter.
Boyle
discovers that the United States is supporting the right-wing dictator.
Government forces are involved in the murder of nuns and a respected archbishop
who had spoken out against the government. Boyle interviews members of the
insurgency and they are portrayed as heroic freedom fighters. And the US
government is in bed with the bad guys. Did you expect something different from
Stone? I do have to point out that Boyle witnesses the rebels killing
prisoners. So, although we are supposed to sympathize with the rebels, it is
clear they are almost as bad as their opponents. Those opponents are dastardly.
They include the sinister latino and the gung-ho, communist hating military
adviser.
“Salvador”
is a message movie, but is unengaging. Boyle is an unappealing character and
hard to root for. The movie would have been better off concentrating on
Cassady. Wood was a good choice for Boyle and he gives his usual slow-burn
acting. Belushi provides comic relief. The trio of characters would fit into
any war journalism movie. That means we get the cliches of getting a story (or
a Pulitzer Prize winning photo) is more important than your family. To get that
story or photo, you have to go in harm’s way. Stone stages some good action
scenes and the movie finishes strong. Prepare to be depressed.
“K-19: The Widowmaker” was directed and
co-produced by Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty). She and the
other producers were the first western civilians to be allowed on the Russian
naval base on the Kola Peninsula. The Russians provided members of the actual
K-19 to serve as technical advisers, but they quit when they realized how far
the script was from reality. Maybe they should have been listened to because
the movie was a bomb, making only $67 million with a cost of $90 million. The
movie was financed by the National Geographic Society. (It took such a beating,
it did not do a comparable movie, “The Way Back”, until eight years later. It
was another bomb.) $25 million of the budget was Harrison Ford’s salary. He
worked 20 days. Nice work if you can get it. Years later, he told an
interviewer that his role was one of his favorites.
The
movie takes place in 1961. The K-19 is a new sub and has not been broken in
yet. A practice nuclear launch fails due to faulty equipment. Foreshadowing!
Capt. Vostrikov (Ford) believes the boat is not ready, but Khrushchev needs to
impress Kennedy with his new super sub. Vostrikov gets the message and
proclaims it to be “the finest sub in the world.” The crew begs to differ when
the champagne bottle used to christen the ship goes clunk instead of crash.
They immediately dub their boat “the Widowmaker”. The dominoes keep falling.
The nuclear reactor officer is drunk on duty and replaced by a rookie who
proceeds to kiss his girl goodbye AND shows off her picture. Dude! What are the
Russian words for “dead meat”. The doctor is killed in an accident. But the
boat does go well past crush depth (like every other sub in a sub movie) but
maybe … Nah! Speaking of cliches, would you believe the Captain and his exec
Polenin (Liam Neeson) butt heads? Polenin and the crew were expecting him to be
promoted to command and feel Vostrikov pulled strings to get the command. Sound
familiar “Run Silent, Run Deep” fans? There is a great scene where the sub surfaces
through polar ice. Then its back to this boat sucks! Then the reactor overheats, as well as other
problems that you wouldn’t give to a monkey on a rock. I won’t spoil it, but
whenever you think you have seen the last problem, you haven’t.
“K-19”
got a raw deal from audiences and critics. Actually, I don’t think you can
fault audiences. Who exactly was the movie aimed at? Russians did not want to
be reminded of the disaster and Westerners did not care about a Soviet sub that
was saved by a valiant crew. Who was the audience supposed to be rooting for?
Harrison Ford, of course. The non-actor part of the budget resulted in a
authentic nuclear sub experience. The cinematography is outstanding. The
interiors are realistic. Not too cramped, not too spacious. The cast is good,
but the character arcof the exec is a
bit too redemptive. And the political officer is quite unrealistic (a possible sop
for Russian cooperation?). I did not find the accents distracting, but I’m not
an accent Nazi. Ford did get some criticism for his lack of one, but what do
you expect for $25 million? Overall, the movie is suspenseful, despite the tropes.
One of which is the brass asses. However, those crass asses do force Ford to
make some interesting decisions that are arguable. One thing is for sure,
you’ll be glad you weren’t on that sub. And you’ll feel sorry for the men who
were. Unless you are a bitter old Cold Warrior.
So,
what did the survivors dislike about the narrative? Do they not understand that
“inspired by actual events” means entertainment trumps history? Apparently not,
because all of their complaints resulted in a big fat “so?” from the producers.
They were upset with the profanity, drinking, and insubordination of their
cinema selves. They disputed the conflict between the captain and the exec.
They clearly had not seen any American sub movies. And they didn’t like the
mutiny which did not happen in real life. (All of these complaints would have
torpedoed (get it?) US Navy cooperation.)
Besides
all that, what else was inaccurate? First let me mention that the main
technical adviser was U.S. Navy Capt. Peter Huchthausen (Ret.). Before you
decide whether to side with him or the crew, bear in mind he wrote the book
that accompanied the release of the movie. The background is accurate. The sub
was rushed into development by Khrushchev’s government because he wanted to
quickly enter the nuclear sub race. Because of the rush and probably because of
Soviet incompetence, the boat had several accidents in production, costing 8
lives. The champagne bottle not breaking was true. But the sub was never called
the Widowmaker. (Don’t you hate it when an historically based movie starts out with
an untrue title?) After the accident, the crew called it the “Hiroshima”. It
was commanded by Nikolai Zateyev whose exec was Vasily Arkhipov (the same
Soviet submariner that did not start WWIII during the Cuban Missile Crisis when
he refused to launch a nuclear torpedo at an American destroyer that was
tailing his sub). I found no evidence that there was any command dysfunction. The
sub suffered several problems during sea trials including some not shown in the
movie. The hulls rubber coating came off. There was flooding during a crash
dive to maximum depth. There was flooding due to cooks clogging the galley’s
waste system. I found no evidence of the sub surfacing through the ice cap.
The
accident was pretty accurately depicted. There was a communications breakdown.
The film does a great job highlighting the courage of the crew and the
leadership of the captain. They did have to jury-rig a new coolant system and
the engineering group did expose themselves to lethal levels of radiation. Even
after that was solved, the ventilation system sent radiation throughout the
ship resulting in 14 deaths over the next two years. The nuclear missiles were
not in danger of exploding. There was no mutiny, but Zateyev did have most of
the sidearms thrown over board to discourage the possibility. Zateyev did make
the decision to sail to link up with some diesel-powered subs. He did encounter
an American destroyer that offered help which was refused. There was no mooning
of a helicopter. In conclusion, “K-19” suffers from the sin of enhancement for
entertainment value, but that can be partly excused as a way to gin up sympathy
for the crew. Sympathy they deserved.
