Phantom

Starring: Ed Harris, David Duchovny, William Fichtner, Lance Henriksen, Johnathon Schaech, Jason Beghe, Sean Patrick Flanery, Julian Adams
Directed by: Todd Robinson
Rating: R
Genre: Thriller, War
2013

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A Soviet submarine captain (Ed Harris) faces world-changing consequences when he's given a mysterious assignment.

Review:

Tim: I wanted to like Phantom more than I did. When I saw that Ed Harris and David Duchovny were making a World War II submarine movie, I was ecstatic. When I heard they were Soviets, I was slightly less excited, but still intrigued. The movie itself isn't especially good, but it does just enough right for me to consider it a decent film. The film barely scraped past $1,000,000 at the box office, but if you have nothing else to do, it's a decent way to spend a few hours.

I should say that I just really like submarine movies. They are exciting, suspenseful, and claustrophobic fun. When's the last time Hollywood delivered a great submarine movie? It's been too long, and unfortunately, Phantom isn't what we were waiting to see. In the absence of a great sub flick, this average one can at least hold us over.

I loved the cast on paper, although their actual performances weren't that great. It is really hard when you're making an American movie about Soviet characters with American characters. Do you have them do Russian accents? It felt like the direction to the cast was, "Just do whatever you feel like." Ed Harris kind of tried to do a Russian accent in most scenes. David Duchovny didn't even bother. It all adds up to a bit of a mess, where the cast never gets past the impression that they are Americans pretending to be Russians. That detracts from the film because it always feels like a film- there's certainly no getting lost in the story here. Accents aside, I thought Harris did a fairly good job. He's such a fantastic actor, he's able to elevate even average movies like this. His performance is the chief reason to see this film. As much as I like Duchovny (and I'm a big, big fan), his performance wasn't great. He never felt Russian and he really doesn't have anything interesting to do. I have no idea why he bothered to make this film, other than the paycheck and maybe the opportunity to act alongside Harris? William Fichtner was a nice addition to the cast and the supporting players are fairly decent across the board. In a film with clear flaws, the talent of the cast isn't one of them.

One of my biggest complaints is just feeling I was left in the dark. So much about this movie was confusing. Yes, there's the central mystery of what the secretive mission of the sub is. When that's finally revealed, it was actually pretty cool. It created some intense and suspenseful moments. But, then there's this whole thing with Harris having these weird visions. I never quite understood why that was necessary to include in the film. There's a mutiny section of the film that was mostly handled well, but it certainly didn't eke every bit of excitement out of those sequences as possible. There's kind of a weird scene at the very end that felt a bit out of place in the movie. Phantom is a film that feels like it had an identity crisis- it was different things at different times and could never quite clarify exactly what it wanted to be. Director Todd Robinson has enough experience for me to think it's really a lack of talent that sunk this film. Robinson wrote the screenplay as well, so he's really responsible for the end result. Oh, and I still don't like how this movie said it was based on actual events, only to do a little research and realize that no one knows what happened to the sub in question, and that the events of this film are only one controversial theory about what might have happened. That was frustrating.

In conclusion, submarine movie fans will appreciate getting a little fix with Phantom, but in the end, this movie is far too flawed. If you add it all up, it's a decent effort, but really, it is a forgettable, average movie.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend:
U571, Below, The Hunt for Red October, K-19: The Widowmaker