Phantom: Blu-ray Review
The Movie:
Demi (Ed Harris) is the captain of a Cold War Soviet missile submarine who has secretly been suffering from seizures that alter his perception of reality. Forced to leave his wife and daughter, he is rushed into a classified mission, where he is haunted by his past and challenged by a rogue KGB group led by Bruni (David Duchovny) bent on seizing control of the ship’s nuclear missile. With the fate of humanity in his hands, Harris discovers he’s been chosen for this mission in the belief he would fail. ‘Phantom’ is a suspense submarine thriller about extraordinary men facing impossible choices
The film initially had me kind of confused. It starts with an introduction of a crew that mans a Soviet submarine but they all in fact speak perfect English……..not even with a Russian accent. I had to back the film up to make sure I didn’t miss something and to make sure they weren’t showing an American crew. With that being said, that was the only thing that bothered me about the film. The story of the brave crew that risked everything to prevent a war is a great and also sad one. The fact that it’s inspired by true events makes this even more intriguing and had me glued to the screen the entire way. Harris’ portrayal of a captain that is tormented by his past and destined to live in the shadow of his father was extremely good. You could see the pain in his performance and his demeanor was that of a military man. Duchovny was really good as well. It takes a great actor to make a personality transformation on screen without you even realizing it until it’s right in your face. He started the film very calm but you could tell that something wasn’t right and before you knew it by the end he was downright aggressive and borderline psycho. Even though he still fairly kept his calm throughout the film you could see the definite change by the end and sometimes crazy-calm is that much scarier. The submarine itself was a character in its own right and provided the claustrophobic feeling from beginning to end. The sub had the crew swaying around the corridors making for a sense of realism and it was also very instrumental part of the story itself. Films like this with some historic significance to them are a win for me and it gets a recommendation from me for sure (just ignore the non-Russian accents…lol).
Special Features:
Facing The Apocalypse – A pretty good Making Of feature that shows the trials of shooting in a sub and creating some of the jolting effects of the sub moving around.
The Real Phantom – A quick historic recount of the actual sub and crew that the film is based on.
Jeff Rona: Scoring Phantom – Rona shows a bit on how he creating some of the haunting music that is in the film.
