Sub Down (1997 TV Movie)
2/10
They Want You , They Want You ...
20 April 2004
... They want you as a new recruit

And if that Village People anthem didn`t get you to sign up to join the navy what chance has SUB DOWN ? No chance really

There`s rather a lot of problems with this movie . One is having Stephen Baldwin as an action hero . Personally speaking I think Mike Baldwin from CORONATION STREET has a better than even chance of becoming an action hero , and according to folklore it`s bad luck to have a woman on a boat . Considering she`s played by Gabrielle Anwar that`s bad luck for the entire movie too not to mention the audience

But the thing that annoyed me was the script . Check this out : A trio of environmentalists get a trip on a nuclear submarine . The submarine crashes and the environmentalists have to save the day . Yeah I`m sure the US navy are so overjoyed about being asked that they`re going to allow a bunch of greenies on their ship , ( I`m sure the Pentagon have been overwhelmed by Greenpeace members asking if they can go to Iraq to do research into depleted uranuim ) though to be fair there`s a lot of environmentalists who`d like to be stuck on a sub with a lot of sex starved sailors , none of whom are female .

Oh and the script is terribly slow , it`s about a third of the way through before anything actually happens and until it does we have to put up with lots of techno-babble which will be of absolute no interest to anybody . It shows you how bad a movie is when you start wishing both a bunch of terrorists AND Steven Seagal would turn up to enliven the scenes

SUB DOWN is one of those movies that`s credited as having Alan Smithee as director ( ie the director didn`t want his real name to be listed ) but the director here can be forgiven for the most part since it`s obvious the budget - Like the script - wasn`t up to much , so the relatively unspectacular crash doesn`t deserve a tirade of criticism . The only thing the director can be blamed for ( Apart from casting Baldwin and Anwar - That goes without saying ) is a scene where a torpedo works loose and slides towards a sailor`s head , unfortunately the shot cuts away before you see his head get squashed . Oh well . I do congratulate the director for including a really funky tune in the opening credits because if it wasn`t for that I might have given SUB DOWN one out of ten but I`ll give the movie two out of ten
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