Watch K-19: The Widowmaker For Free

Best movie of this year hands down!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The story of USSR's first nuclear ballistic submarine, which suffered a malfunction in its nuclear reactor on its maiden voyage in the North Atlantic in 1961. The submarine's crew, led by the unyielding Captain Alexi Vostrikov, races against time to prevent a Chernobyl-like nuclear disaster which threatens not only the lives of his crew, but has the potential to ignite a world war between the super powers. I knew that this movie was going to be failure once i saw Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson playing 2 Russian Captains i mean that thing alone makes the movie meh and sure you don't have to be from Russia to play a Russian Captain or anything but only a few actors succeed on that role (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren, John Travolta and Scott Adkins) plus the movie starts and continues with a very slow pacing that totally made me get bored out of my mind although on the good side of things both the acting and some of the effects were pretty good but still 2 great and talented actors can't save a movie so boring and dull as K-19: The Widowmaker. (5/10)

First, my binary mind just don't support this kind of American movies that applause the bravery of defeated enemies. Like "Iwo Jiwa", I found them inappropriate: the history of Russia should be told by Russians and if Americans wants to refresh war movies, they should start by telling us battles they have lost! Next, this movie is just dreadfully boring: Maybe I suffer from cabin's fever, but a whole movie in a submarine isn't my kind of entertainment! This is surely not "red October" and here, the action is very limited: preparation, drills and accident! At last, there is Harrison and Liam at the helm because without them, it would have been just unwatchable! But this extraordinary meeting just turns out a big disappointment. The movie is badly directed, without rhythm, scope or score! It's paying too much attention on technological details that I had to fast-forward a lot of times! Now, with this horrible movie, I just wait for the Russian version of that story and at least, I'm sure that it can't be more boring!

This movie is dramatic, hard to watch, because what you see in the movie is what happened in realty. If you browse Wikipedia about the K-19 submarine, you notice that every detail in the movie is described in Wikipedia. It is troubling seeing the sacrifices.I am not a fan of Harrison Ford outside the Jones character, but if you look to the picture of the real Russian commander, he looks like Harrison Ford! The movie is good because it relates what happened, and it does it so well. Very good filming, acting is not the best because there are several known American actors and it's not easy to imagine them as Russian people. Moreover the main cast in their characters look like too many known American movies.What's not pleasant in this movie, it's the constant melodramatic soundtrack. Someone in Hollywood doesn't understand how art works, it doesn't need to look pitiful to have the spectators emotionally involved. On the other hand it's what made the movie popular for the masses. Would be good to have such movies with a soundtrack OFF option on a DVD edition.

Back in the heat of cold war, the Soviet Union entered into an ill-advised technological advancement war. Despite initial much publicised success the effort strained the country, when funds and ingenuity were diverted from more pressing needs. Nonetheless the K-19 nuclear submarine was another great achievement of Russian thought, not to undermine the ultimate failure of internal machinery. Too proud for reason the Soviet Union decides to float the boat, despite an onslaught of minor faults still troubling the technical crew. The more familial Captain Mikhail Polenin (Liam Neeson) tries to delay deployment, but ultimately his superior and first-in-command Captain Alexei Vostrikov (Harrison Ford) holds the decision. Dedicated to the Soviet Union and instructions from above, despite misgivings Vostrikov orders the K-19 to be floated and the crew soon journeys into the international waters. Unfortunately, the unthinkable and inevitable occurs...Unabashedly dedicated to war history Kathryn Bigelow warps the standard and delves into a story without American warships and submarine, instead omitting the ideological backdrop and capturing the human ordeal behind the ill-fated K-19. And this is her main point of valour, as unfortunately the story itself fails to really hit, sometimes forced to advance through standardised Hollywood gimmicks. Nonetheless the attempts to avert a nuclear catastrophe by the crew, who haphazardly try to weld a radioactive leak, is as gut-wrenching as it is mesmerising. Pretty damning liberties with the facts in order to guarantee 'narrative flow' are one point of contention, the other a somewhat 'ghost in the machine' resolution of the tentative relationship between Polenin and Vostrikov (not to mention that the whole worn-down theme of conflict between the ship captain and his second in charge seemed derivative to the more dreaded occurrences on the ship). The trite resolution of the conflict unmistakeably comes with buoyant music and some artless angelic comeuppance. Harrison Ford is of no help with his shifting accent and lack of conviction.Making the movie feel somewhat like the submarine itself: a bloated chaotic mess released into the cinematic waters despite its apparent flaws. Not entirely successful in its endeavour, Bigelow does manage to show some of her directorial creds, but the overall product is watchable in its excess, but hardly memorable in retrospect.