K-19: The Widowmaker Critic Reviews

(Director Bigelow) piles up one nerve-racking crisis after another, interspersed with moments of ethereal, almost otherworldly beauty.Read the full review

Impressive and heartfelt.Read the full review

There is one surprise in the movie, a decision having nothing to do with the reactor, that depends entirely on the ability of the characters to act convincingly under enormous pressure; casting stars of roughly equal weight helps it to work.Read the full review

The movie gradually works its way, with quiet intelligence and apparent conviction, until there's no turning from it. An hour in, and we're on that boat.Read the full review

A relentlessly serious action movie, characterized by, of all things, sorrow.Read the full review

K-19 will not go down in the annals of cinema as one of the great submarine stories, but it is an engaging and exciting narrative of Man confronting the Demons of his own fear and paranoia.Read the full review

After spending so much time letting the characters' deeds do the talking, the film veers into overkill, which comes as a letdown. But the actions linger longer than the words.Read the full review

K-19's determination to push hard for self-congratulatory morals and convenient resolutions undercut the film's strengths and make it more conventional.Read the full review

Obediently follows the verities of the submarine movie and its true story origins but without the imagination needed to refresh the genre.Read the full review