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Well, Harrison Ford's latest movie is indeed about a heroic Soviet sub commander and his crew in the year 1961. And Ford and the movie's director, Kathryn Bigelow, have gone out of their way to make it sound as though K-19: The Widowmaker is a pro-Soviet movie. Bigelow has given interviews about how her film shows the world from a Soviet perspective, and Ford himself told Jay Leno he didn't know how Americans were going to take it, given that it's full of Soviet heroism and all. The American people aren't taking it well at all. K-19: The Widowmaker opened this weekend to the worst box office of any Harrison Ford action movie. But you can't immediately go to the Soviet angle to explain the movie's failure. First off, K-19 has a really bad trailer in which Harrison Ford can be heard talking in a Russian accent about as ridiculous as the one used by Boris Badenov in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon series. Second, it is saddled with the worst title in the history of titles. K-19: The Widowmaker doesn't suggest high adventure so much as it does make you think it's a really depressing sequel to K-9, the cheapo comedy starring Jim Belushi and a lovable police dog. Bad trailer, bad title, and bad politics do make for a bad combination. Only it turns out the politics of K-19 aren't bad at all. The movie is a harsh condemnation of the Soviet Union's politicized military structure, and profoundly sentimental about the Soviet sailors who had to live with the consequences of the Kremlin's decision-making. K-19 passes my conservative anti-Communist ideological litmus test just fine. Which means one of two things. Either Bigelow and Ford think it would be a good selling point for the American people to think they've made a pro-Soviet movie, or they're a couple of morons who don't understand the movie they made. I don't know what the answer is, and I don't really care. But here's one theory: Maybe Harrison Ford's brain isn't working right these days because he's hanging out with Calista Flockhart and having a single Tic-Tac for dinner like she does. K-19 tells the true story of the construction and first voyage of a doomed Soviet nuclear submarine. The boat is intended to be the glory of the fleet and the key deterrent against the United States. But we see from the very first scene that the construction is shoddy. The sub's captain, played by Liam Neeson, has a temper tantrum when the party bosses tell him it must be deployed quickly. The Kremlin brings in a new commander over Neeson, played by Harrison Ford. Ford is a by-the-book military man who brooks no dissent and doesn't like how soft and easygoing Neeson has been with the crew. He pushes them and the boat to meet difficult challenges. Neeson objects, but Ford has a point, and he gets the crew to work wonders. Still, he's an ambiguous figure — a party loyalist who got the job because his father-in-law is high up in the Politburo. Neeson's worries about the ship's construction are proved prophetic when there's a breach in the core of one of the ship's nuclear reactors. The event occurs about 40 minutes into the movie. Until this point, K-19 is a tiresome collection of submarine-movie clichés, all done better in other films. But when the disaster occurs, K-19 becomes a gripping portrait of leadership in crisis and individual heroism in extraordinary circumstances. Ford's Russian accent, which is worse in the trailer than in the movie, ceases being a bother. Instead, we become involved in Ford's crisis of conscience. Should he abandon his boat to save his crew, in which case he and they will be interrogated by the enemy Americans? Or should he do what he can to bring the boat back to the motherland, even if it means the death of everyone on board from radiation poisoning? K-19 isn't
great. But it's not a recruiting poster for the Communist Party, no matter
what its star and director might say.
— Mr.
Podhoretz is a columnist for the New
York Post. |
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I tell you that Harrison Ford's latest movie is about a heroic Soviet
sub commander and his crew in the year 1961, you NRO readers would immediately
know what to expect: Commie propaganda. There may be no more Soviet Union
and precious little Communism out there, but you know some folks in Hollywood
are feeling nostalgic for the good old days. 
