Great movie, great cast (Harrison Ford and Liam Neesen) and a great yarn; as anything that *actually* happened often is. Not because the plot is so much thicker or more tense, but because your suspension of disbelief is absolute and your imagination runs riot - "what was it *actually* like?" as opposed to “oh that wouldn’t happen!”
About the first soviet nuclear sub sent to perform a missile test to let president Kennedy know that mutually assured destruction was a reality. Just a year before Cuba.
(Kookily, I am guessing but, the film would have been made, or at least scoped, during the sinking of the K-141 Kursk in August 2000.)
It opens with these chilling facts that even for me today seem staggering. Yet I grew up in this stark political and military scenario. 'The soviets had enough missiles to destroy the world two times over,' said the opening copy, 'the Americans ten times over. Yet they kept making them. War was inevitable. It was just a question of when and who first.' That was 1961.
By 1983 - by which time Reagan was in the White House talking about the evil empire - I was only just beginning to gain political consciousness and understanding the reality of impending death any minute now, I imagine both nations could destroy the world hundreds of times over. My father - then in the RAF - was involved in exercises in Scandanavia where opposing sides would fly million dollar jets up and down the border teasing each other, provoking each other, tempting each other.
So many people wanted war. It is so lucky it was avoided. (Gives us hope !) But how much money was wasted? And were either really wrong? Both were flawed; both views had virtues. There's a scene where the party Commisar lectured the crew of the sub with images of American life in the early 1960s, the cars, the appliances etc. Then the civil rights riots and the poverty. America is still like that. Free for the middle class, the successful, the affluent. Not so free for the disadvantaged, the African Americans, the poor, etc.
Meanwhile at least communism was in theory aligned to protect the poor, to ensure wealth was distributed more equally, to cater for the society instead of the individual. I am sure were it not forced to invest so much money in protecting itself from an aggressive capitalist alliance, it might have achieved more - for humanty's benefit. However, I am not that naive of course: 'more equal for some than for others' as in Animal Farm?
And in those 45 years, how much money was wasted in the arms race. Where would the world be today if both sides had just focussed on their own social inequities instead of trying to reduce the other side to its knees. Perhaps the problems of each side would have been solved if only the two sides could have pursued a live-and-let-live policy.
I know. Silly.
Interestingly - and without going into detail - faced with the choice, the crew of the K-19 chose saving the world over saving their country. If only we were all more inclusive.