I've been trying to pinpoint the exact thing that went wrong with K-19: The Widowmaker for the last couple of days, other than the obvious fact that it has one of the worst titles in movie history. I walked into the movie with a lot of anticipation, and yet when I walked out, I felt that I'd been cheated. I was disappointed to say the least.

I attempted to write a review of the film last night, only to realize that I didn't know what to say about the movie. I couldn't really recommend it because, like I said, I was disappointed by it. But then, thinking about the movie, I knew that it wasn't exactly a bad film. Then, earlier this afternoon, it hit me.

Anyone who's seen the movie is going to know that Ford's character, Captain Alexi Vostrikov, is far from a hero. He's disliked by his entire crew. He's a hard ass. He's strict. He's downright mean at times. Just because he's the main character in the film doesn't make him the "hero." Apparently whoever was in charge of the advertising campaign for this film hadn't even seen the movie.

But of course, the trailers were misleading too. They showed us the Second Coming of Das Boot. They showed us thrilling action sequences, complete with all of the clichés that we'd expect from a submarine movie, such as torpedoes (not one is fired in the actual movie), diving to crush depth, full speed ahead and all that jazz. And you know, that would've been all fine and dandy had this been an actual thriller. But alas, it isn't.

However, at times it seems that it tries to be a thriller. The first hour of the movie consists of little more than drills and tests that do a pretty good job of disguising themselves as tense and thrilling situations. But once you really think about it, you realize that there's no danger at all and then you scoot back off of the edge of your seat because it seems pretty stupid to be worried about what essentially amounts to a whole lot of nothing. The truth is, this is a political drama with little bits of action thrown in -- I can only assume -- to make it a bit more commercial.

Any suspenseful aspect that the movie may have possessed it killed by the fact that it's "inspired by actual events" (which is to say, it's kind of based on a true story but fictional liberties have been taken with it to make it, yet again, more commercial). The fact that the events in the film took place 40 years ago, and did NOT start WWIII sort of gives away the ending doesn't it? We're all still alive. We're not glowing in the dark or sprouting third eyes. Suspense flies right out the window when you look at it that way.

Ford and Neeson do what they're supposed to do in the film and they both do an above par job at it. Both are very strong in their roles... and those Russian accents? Well, to me they weren't distracting one bit. They're not thick enough to be unintelligible, but just there to further enhance the realism of the film. Both of these actors' performances are worthy of praise and are worth the price of admission to the film. Most of the true tension in the film has nothing to do with torpedoes and crush depths, but is between these two men, different sides of the same coin.

After the pointless first hour is when the real plot of the movie begins and there's a breakdown in the sub's nuclear reactor. The better part of the next hour is spent trying to repair the damage, which involves crew members being forced into being exposed to raw radiation, which of course, is bad. As suspenseful as these events could have been, they weren't. I found myself being bored on more than one occasion and was only drawn back in by scenes with Ford and Neeson.

Towards the end of the film, there's even a nice little twist, but it really leads nowhere. However, it serves it's purpose to offer a little bit of suspense in a film that seems to have forgotten all about the thrilling aspects of a thriller.

After all is said and done, K-19 delivers absolutely nothing close to what the advertising promised, something that's become an annoyingly growing trend nowadays. I walked into the theater expecting another Crimson Tide or Hunt For Red October. Submarine movies have the built-in potential for suspense. They're claustrophobic (there's only so many ways that a camera can move inside of a sub) and tense because they involve men in life-threatening situations who are usually far from home and often times under thousands of tons of water. And while K-19 had the same sort of situations, somewhere along the line it fell short and lost it's suspense. This isn't Crimson Tide and definitely not Hunt For Red October and it doesn't even deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as Das Boot.

As a thriller, K-19 fails. As a political drama, it had all the potential in the world to succeed. Unfortunately, somebody sitting in an office somewhere decided that it'd be best to deceive the public into thinking that they were seeing another submarine action flick when they were getting the absolute opposite. Maybe if I'd been in the mood for a political drama, I'd have enjoyed K-19. As it were, I was as deceived as everyone else by the studio and walked out very, very disappointed.

One last note: I've got to applaud director Kathryn Bigelow for not Americanizing this movie. When you've got a story that pretty much puts Americans as the bad guys, it takes balls to pull it off, especially in this day and age. In fact, Americans are only seen in a single scene and only from a distance. Good directorial choice. It'd be nice to see more directors take this bold approach. I only wonder what the reaction to the film will be if and when it eventually makes its way to Russia. Time will tell.