During its release dead-center in the middle of the 1990s, Crimson Tide felt more than a little like a watered-down retread of The Hunt for Red October, once again churning up Cold War paranoia for another (then) modern-day nuclear submarine thriller. Three decades on, the film’s plot about a megalomanaical Russian dictator plunging the world to the brink of chaos with his invasion of a neighboring republic, while feckless American politicians waffle about what (if anything) to do about it, somehow feels more timely and relevant than it did originally.
Right at this moment, I’ve chosen to pull this particular movie off the shelf due to the recent passing of star Gene Hackman. Honestly, I could’ve picked a weightier or more respected title from the actor’s long career (say, The French Connection or The Conversation), but I was more in the mood for something frivolous to take my mind off the terrible state of world affairs. What I didn’t expect was to be left a little shaken by the question of whether anyone in today’s American military would be courageous enough to stand up to authority and refuse an illegal (or at least highly questionable) order from a superior officer, perhaps even coming from the Commander-in-Chief?
I’d like to believe so. I know and respect a number of people who have served or are currently serving in the Armed Forces. I know this very issue is already forefront in many of their own minds right now. I want to trust that enough of the safeguards built into the system to prevent disaster will hold, despite active attempts to dismantle them all. A movie like Crimson Tide ultimately may just be Hollywood fantasy, but I have to hope that some of the values it professes will stand firm in the real world.
| Title: | Crimson Tide |
| Year of Release: | 1995 |
| Director: | Tony Scott |
| Watched On: | Blu-ray |
| Also Available On: | DVD Amazon Prime Video Various VOD rental and purchase platforms |
Make no mistake, as a movie, Crimson Tide was built first and foremost as popcorn entertainment. Watching the blockbuster success of Red October, mega-producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer immediately called their Top Gun director Tony Scott back to active duty for another Navy-themed thrill ride, this one set under the sea rather than in the sky.
Denzel Washington is the hero of the story as Lt. Cmdr. Hunter, a dedicated submariner recently promoted to Executive Officer of the nuclear vessel U.S.S. Alabama. His captain, Frank Ramsey (Hackman), is known to be a bit of a hardass, but is charismatic, likeable, respected by his men, and has an impressive career record. The two get along fine at first, until a conflict in Chechnya flares up to the point that Russian troops seize control of a nuclear missile complex and threaten to attack the United States. The Alabama is sent to nearby waters, and soon receives authenticated orders to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike.
Capt. Ramsey, a man of strict discipline, moves immediately to follow his orders. However, protocol dictates that nuclear weapons cannot be launched without agreement between both the captain and the XO, and Hunter has doubts. A second transmission, possibly with countermanding orders to abort, was cut-off before completion. Fearing that they’re about to initiate a nuclear holocaust, Hunter begs his captain to wait until communications can be re-established, but the bull-headed Ramsey refuses to budge. He has confirmed orders in hand to launch, and that’s damn well what he’s going to do.
The dispute between the two men reaches such a pitch that Ramsey illegally relieves Hunter from duty, and Hunter feels compelled to lead a mutiny overthrowing him. This sows division among the crew, some loyal to the captain and others siding with Hunter. All the while, the timer counts down to the deadline where it will be too late to stop the Russians from firing first.
Even with heavy themes about the conflict between duty and morality, Crimson Tide is decidedly more of a boilerplate Hollywood action flick than the superlative geopolitical thriller The Hunt for Red October was. The plot essential boils down to a pair of powerhouse actors screaming at one another in between torpedo battles with an enemy sub, near-disastrous flooding damage, and of course the requisite dive to hull-crushing depth that no submarine movie can do without.
Still, all those things are fun, and Tony Scott stages them with maximum efficiency, suspense, and slick stylization. The supporting cast is fleshed out by notable faces such as Viggo Mortensen, James Gandolfini, George Dzundza, and even former child star Rick Schroder. If you squint, you might recognize Steve Zahn in an early role as one of the crewmen.
The screenplay, officially credited to writers Michael Schiffer and Richard P. Henrick, nicely balances the genre tropes with a little thought-provoking thematic complexity. As the denouement spells out, in the final analysis, both protagonists are right and both are wrong. The Ramsey character is not a cartoonish villain; everything he does is motivated by his firm belief that his actions are necessary for the protection of the world, and in slightly different circumstances, he could just as easily have been proven correct rather than Hunter.
With that said, the movie’s script received some assistance from other uncredited writers, including David Milch, James Toback, Robert Towne, and Steven Zaillian. Famously, Quentin Tarantino was also brought in for a last-minute punch-up, and every single line he contributed (the crew quizzing each other on trivia about famous submarine movies, plus references to Marvel’s Silver Surfer comics and Star Trek) stands out in stark relief from the rest of the material. One of the deleted scenes on the Blu-ray (which did wind up incorporated into an extended cut on DVD), has an otherwise likeable character telling a long and uncomfortable homophobic joke that almost certainly came from Tarantino’s keyboard.
Crimson Tide is perhaps a little too formulaic and has a little too much Hollywood BS to rank among the top-tier cinematic submarine thrillers, but for what it is and what it set out to be, the movie delivers the goods well enough and holds up better than I expected.
The Blu-ray
Crimson Tide was a relatively early release on the Blu-ray format. Its one and so far only Blu-ray edition was released way back in 2008 by Disney, distributing for subsidiary Hollywood Pictures. The studio’s hideous swoosh banner and ridiculous “Beyond High Definition” slogan obscure half the cover art in the case. The disc is burdened with a Blu-ray promo ad and multiple forced trailers upon startup, which must be (very slowly) skipped individually. Once you finally get to it, the menu has an infuriating interface that takes forever to respond to any selection.
The Blu-ray contains only the film’s 116-minute, R-rated theatrical cut, not the Unrated Extended Edition that added about six minutes of filler for DVD.
The ancient, DNR-ridden video transfer nevertheless looks to date back to the DVD era. The 2.35:1 image has a heavily-processed appearance, with detail and textures softened by the noise reduction and then electronically sharpened afterward. Edge halos are light but still intrude regularly, and any film grain that survived the DNR filter is extremely harsh. Occasional speckles point to this master being scanned from an intermediary film element rather than the negative. The entire picture has a flat, hazy look and is desperately in need of a remaster.
Unfortunately, given Disney’s lack of support for physical media these days, I don’t hold out much hope for a 4K Ultra HD edition in the near future. Perhaps a better transfer will eventually show up on streaming, but I’m not aware of any plans for that at the moment.
The disc defaults to a lossy Dolby Digital soundtrack, while an uncompressed PCM 5.1 version must be selected manually. As a 1990s action movie, Crimson Tide has a very loud and bombastic sound design, with tons of rumbly bass, booming explosions, and immersive surround activity. During the submarine battles, torpedoes slice through the listening space from front to rear. It’s a lot of fun, in a way that modern films (which are mostly mixed for soundbar listening) tend to shy away from. However, the track often seems loud just for the sake of being loud, and the Hans Zimmer musical score lacks depth.
Extras are minimal, consisting only of two promotional making-of featurettes and a small handful of deleted scenes that all seem to be footage cut from that Unrated version. The studio also foisted in something called Movie Showcase, that amounts to a scenes-selection guide to “the filmmaker’s most cinematic moments,” likely chosen by some anonymous college intern working in the PR department at the time.
Related
- Tony Scott (director)
- Gene Hackman (star)
- Quentin Tarantino (writer)
- Don Simpson & Jerry Bruckheimer (producers)
- Cold War Theme
- Naval Insurrection Drama
The Video File Blog 
Rewatched this a year or two ago and it was even better than I remembered it. The only thing that seems out of place is the Tarantino contributions to the script. Other than that it’s an absolute banger of a thriller, and Scott’s best film imho.
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