The Command

I remember the TV coverage of the disaster and the film captures it faithfully, including the injection of a sedative to one of the distraught mothers. Anyway, one thing is clear from the film: if something similar happened to any of the NATO armies that the local Putin trolls spit on as much as they can, their leadership might break ranks to save these boys. But the Russian military leadership has a different yardstick, the ‘there’s plenty of us’ rule. In Russia, human life has never been worth anything, ever since the Battle of Stalingrad, when they deployed young unarmed boys to the front lines with firing squads at their backs. As Papa Stalin used to say: “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.” Russia, a land of unlimited possibilities... (06/03/2019)

We haven’t had this good of a submarine film since K-19. It's 100% impressive depressing drama... Especially when it gives the sailors and their families little hope that everything can turn out good after all. And you wish for it with them. However, probably every viewer knows how the events really played out, and that's why those scenes are so strong. Admittedly, I didn't expect much from The Command, but I ended up sitting in the movie theatre and not moving, filled with tension and feeling pretty miserable during the end credits. It is shot great (the directing and camera use the claustrophobic environment to the maximum and, for example, the quest for oxygen is unforgettable), Alexander Desplat's music did not disappoint and for me, the unknown actors - Colin Firth or Max von Sydow - give very believable performances. (01/19/2019)

I would like to draw your attention to Marigold's submarine dogma in advance: submarine = automatically * plus. Because according to all other criteria, Thomas Vinterberg shot only a slightly above-average genre template. A celebration of boyish friendship spiced with sentiment and two-dimensional characters. He tries to draw something more from the jerky screenplay by Robert Rodat (among others, Saving Private Ryan) through format changes, veristic filming and emphasis on wordless details (a boy as a silent witness and conscience). But there is simply nothing more in this film. The real case is devastating and could do without the extra drama. The film works because some of the sequences are catchy (underwater search for oxygen cartridges in one suffocating shot) and Schoenaerts does a decent job in the lead role, as does Firth in the supporting role. As a Kursk Memorial it is dignified, but above the surface the film does not release the conflict between the Hollywood template and the attempt to conceive it as a civil statement about the tragedy of ordinary people. The performances of broken mothers then inadvertently resemble bad theater. It's a shame, but the years in development hell didn't help. (01/15/2019)

I'm not a big fan of submarines and the Navy, so I went into this film more out of curiosity and it wasn't bad. The explosion in Kursk is filmed decently and the following submarine survival drama is filmed entertainingly though it definitely could have been grittier as well as more gripping. I wasn't bored but I'm not the target audience. However, for fans of submarines and movies based on true events, I recommend it. 60%. (05/14/2019)

Movies about submarines usually bore me, which fortunately I can't say about The Command. Vinterberg managed to record the infamous story of a great human tragedy, for which the Russian Admiralty is to blame, quite comprehensively and very realistically. I was infinitely distressed at the thought of how all those young men must have felt as they deliberately waited for death in a badly damaged submarine. Their families, losing their last vestiges of hope with each passing hour after the accident, probably need not be mentioned. Matthias Schoenaerts fought for survival at the bottom of the Barents Sea so fiercely and convincingly that I secretly hoped for his rescue. (80%) (07/02/2021)