As with many a tale like this - we will probably never know the whole story of how the Russian submarine "Kursk" came to sink and of the desperate attempts to rescue the stranded sailors. What Thomas Vinterberg does here, though, is direct a film with a plausible, quite compelling, narrative that elicits good, solid, performances from Matthias Schoenaerts and August Diehl who manage to convey the claustrophobic scenes on board remarkably well. Max von Sydow exemplifies the old guard establishment figure to a T and lends all the more to the frustration that maybe more could have been done to save lives had politicking played a less prominent role in the salvage process. Any comments on the accuracy of the efforts at international collaboration would be speculative, but Colin Firth does imbue some genuine sense of eagerness to assist and an awareness of the urgencies involved. This is well worth a watch.
