I’m going to say right here and now that this is not a list of WAR MOVIES. There are a lot of movies set on submarines: Das Boot (1981), The Enemy Below (1957), Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), U-571 (2000), Morgenrot (1933), We Dive at Dawn (1943), The Command (2018)… and that’s just the tip of the submarine. These are all war movies. If I bothered to discuss all the movies ever to feature scenes set on submarines, we’d be here all day, because a lot of war movies are set on submarines.
No, I’m talking about crimey movies set on submarines. I’m talking about thrillers and espionage movies with scenes set on submarines. Even better would be a crimey movie with a superfluous submarine, a movie where there doesn’t need to be a submarine because it’s not about submarines, but there is a submarine anyway!
Now, I know I said no war movies, but I’m permitting COLD war movies. Otherwise we’d have two Mission: Impossibles on here and absolutely nothing else. Cold War = yes, warm or hot wars = no.
Now, does one of my favorite all-time movies, The Russians are Coming, the Russians are coming (1966) count? I’ve analyzed that movie every which way, and I don’t think we can call it a crime movie. It’s not a thriller, it’s actually not an espionage movie… it’s a charming political satire and a heartwarming comedy about geopolitical tensions. But it’s not actually… about crime. I’m drawing the line. I don’t want to, but I’m going to.
Okay. Everybody know the rules? Fantastic. Let’s dive in!
K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)
Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson star in this 2002 historical film directed and produced by Kathryn Bigelow, about a Russian navy captain who is ordered to take the U.S.S.R.’s greatest naval asset, the K-19 nuclear missile submarine, out on patrol… but runs into trouble when pipes burst, triggering the vessel to malfunction, and threaten to cause a core meltdown and a nuclear explosion that won’t just kill everyone on board, but also might start World War III!!! It’s quite an interesting movie; I have no idea why no one’s ever seen it. Writing in RogerEbert.com, Robert Daniels suggests it has to do with the unexpectedness of Ford playing a card-carrying Soviet commander: “Fascinatingly, as Vostrikov, Ford turned his back on his best qualities: He sported a hammy but far from comical Russian accent, and barely brandished his beguiling smile or popped a witty joke. In fact, you spend much of the film despising this heartless character: a man driven solely by an unquestioned loyalty to the party.” I buy that.
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
I love The Spy Who Loved Me, and not only because it frequently references the movie Jaws (1975). It’s great fun. It’s the best of the Roger Moore 007s by far. They dumped a lot of money into it and, man, did it pay off. Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun, the two previous installments, were each made for $7 million, but The Spy Who Loved Me got a budget of almost the two put together: $13.5 million. They ramped up the special effects and stuntwork, got Claude Renoir to do the cinematography, pulled out all the stops!!!! The characters include a seven-foot-tall henchman with steel teeth who bites people to death and a marine-obsessed madman with webbed hands who wants to turn the planet into a giant ocean. There’s even a slightly healthier attitude towards women in this one: much of the film features flirtatious one-ups-man-ship between Bond and an equally competent and smart female Russian spy. There’s AN UNDERWATER CAR… oh, and submarines! Two submarines! One missing sub, and the villain’s spider-like underwater home.
Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning, Part 1 (2023) and Mission: Impossible-The Final Reckoning (2025)
These two movies go together. The first one concerns a submarine wh0se experimental AI operating system has purposefully sunk the vessel to the bottom of the freezing ocean, but the second one takes place on that submarine, at the bottom of the freezing ocean. In that installment, our man Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) must find a way onboard that sunken submarine and get the AI’s original source code from the computer in its vault… all without the AI finding out, which is hard, because it’s everywhere (in every wi-fi-enabled technological device).
TM & Copyright © 2002 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
The Hunt for Red October (1990)
Sean Conner is a Soviet naval captain who has gone rogue, taking his submarine Red October with him. He wants to defect to the U.S., but no one knows this… meaning the Soviet Red Fleet thinks the U.S. Navy did something to it, and the U.S. Navy doesn’t know what the heck is going on. Well, SOMEONE in the U.S. Navy knows what’s going on… and it’s Jack Ryan!! Yes, I’m talking about Alec Baldwin, and he’s here to save the day!
