Kursk: The Last Mission

Cast: Matthias Schoenaerts, Lea Seydoux, and Colin Firth

Director: Thomas Vinterberg

117 minutes (12) 2018

Signature Blu-ray region B

Rating: 8/10

Review by Donald Morefield  

A European production in English, directed by Danish film-maker Thomas Vinterberg, this is a disaster movie based upon a true story about Russian submarine tragedy in August 2000. Kursk: The Last Mission (aka: The Command) starts with a wedding sequence in a smaller home-video styled frame-ratio, that only expands to a widescreen format after 17 minutes, when the sub departs from port. It embarks on a Northern Fleet exercise, monitored closely and with great concern by Royal Navy officers, in a British intelligence department led by Commodore Russell (Colin Firth, The King’s Speech, and Kingsman spoof movies), who is duly alarmed when the nuclear-powered vessel sinks in the Barents Sea.

With a name that sounds like ‘cursed’, perhaps the Russian ‘Kursk’ was always a doomed boat. A faulty and over-heated torpedo aboard for test-firing explodes, and the damaged sub drops onto the seabed. The secondary detonations of several warheads destroys the boat’s forward section. Among the surviving mariners, Mikhail (Matthias Schoenaerts, spy drama Red Sparrow), struggles to maintain discipline in a panicky crew, awaiting rescue. Back at home, his pregnant wife Tanya (French star Lea Seydoux, best known for Bond blockbuster Spectre), demands answers from shamefully secretive Russian officials, in a grim tale of technical negligence, prejudiced stupidity, and melancholic failure.

In our current international era of bureaucratic suspicion and territorial military paranoia, Kursk delivers an ethical and heartfelt message that compassionate behaviour nowadays is usually an act of extraordinary bravery. Despite a few differences from the actual millennial events, and a focus on emotive suffering rather than the simply practical considerations of political cooperation and military opposition, this picture offers a sterling drama of humanity under extreme conditions where loss of life might have been avoided. 

Pride and patriotic fervour always count for nothing when there’s not a shred of dignity or honour in meaningless death. Seeing those children, now fatherless, refusing to shake hands with obstinate Russian admiral Petrenko (a formidable presence, 90-year-old Max von Sydow here brings heavyweight credentials), delivers an instantly engaging and moving tribute with the effective power of painfully silent resentment in social protest.