Saw it tonight. It was good.

Story by Louis Nowra
Screenplay by Christopher Kyle
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

Harrison Ford Capt. Alexi Vostrikov
Liam Neeson Executive Officer Capt. Polenin
Peter Sarsgaard Reactor Officer Vadim Radtchenko (the new, inexperienced one engaged to Katya)
Donald Sumpter Dr. Savran
Michael J.X. Gladis Yevgeny Borzenkov (the one with the mouse)

The true story of Russia's first nuclear ballistic submarine, which suffered a malfunction in its nuclear reactor on its maiden voyage in the North Atlantic in 1961. The submarine's crew, led by the unyielding Captain Vostrikov (Harrison Ford), races against time to prevent a Chernobyl-like nuclear explosion which threatens not only the lives of his crew, but has the potential to ignite a world war between the super powers. This true story was kept secret until the fall of communism.

There was plenty of plot tension, lots of thrills, you empathized with the characters and what they went through, and it was fascinating to see a movie set during the height of the Cold War told from the point of view of the Soviets. The camaraderie and reverence for duty among the officers was well-done. Harrison Ford was good as the strict Vostrikov, as was Liam Neeson as Polenin, the Captain beloved by the crew who is forced to serve as Excutive Officer under Captain Vostrikov, recalling the Decker/Kirk tension from Star Trek The Motion Picture.

That said, the Russian accents weren’t at all believable (often it sounded as if characters were simply speaking with their own American accents and not even trying to sound Russian).

Spoiler Warning: The second nit/question refers to pivotal plot elements of the movie.

If the use of inexperienced officers in this movie actually occurred in real life, it could actually lead credence to ST Generations. The reactor officer, was a nuclear physics student who never handled a reactor at sea, and he’s replacing a previous one who was found drunk and asleep while on duty. The ship’s doctor doesn’t know anything about radiation sickness. There are no radiation suits on board. In addition, did they say why, if Vostrikov was commanding the mission, that Polenin was also there? (I missed the first few minutes of the movie.) Were there not any other qualifed executive officers? If so, that actually leads credence to ST TMP, and my nits regarding Captain Kirk and Captain Spock both serving on the Enterprise in ST V and ST VI.

It seems that we’re meant to sympathize with Vostrikov, but it seems that the Party Officer/Morale Officer who decided to arrest Vostrikov for dereliction of duty was right. The movie states that the seven men who worked on the leak died days after returning home, and that twenty more died over the next three years. Had Vostrikov scuttled the ship and put his men in lifevests, some of them might have survived. (And I’m referring here only to the story depicted in the movie—which I’m regarding for the purposes of this opinion as fictional—as opposed to whatever actually happened in real life, which may not have been exactly what was in the movie.) Vostrikov stated he would not surrender the ship to the Americans, but the mustached officer didn’t say anything about that. He specifically said they should "scuttle" the ship. While the word "scuttle" can mean either "discard" or "scrap," that officer mentioned that there were five miles above the ocean floor, an indication that his intent was to let the ship sink to the bottom before any chain reaction caused a nuclear explosion. He did not want to surrender it to the Americans. But what does Vosrtrikov end up doing? He ends up trying to offload his men onto the other Soviet submarine that shows up. So if he wasn’t unwilling to do this, why didn’t he do it when Polenin, the Party Officer and the other guy urged him to do so?

What is the derivation of the number K-19, and what does the 294 on the upper tower refer to? Is K-19 the class, and 294 the number for Vostrikov’s sub?

Haven't ANY sailors learned this lesson yet? ;
If you're on a submarine and you're in your bunk and another sailor asks you what you're doing, and you have a picture of your girlfriend/wife/fiancee, and you actually show it to him, you're going to die. No question about it. Talking about how she is your first love, or how you're gonna marry her when you get back will only accelerate you towards your demise.......
Overall, I didn't think this film was too impressive. It never really seemed to be building up to anything, and it didn't really do a good job of certain elements such as how the situation is viewed in Moscow, or the possibility that K-19's explosion could start a war. These get only minor mentions. And there were more than a few cliches like the one mentioned above....

It seems that K-19 was sent out to act as a counter to the U.S Regulus (Cruise Missile) Submarines which were off the coast of eastern Russia at the time,i.e it was a reaction to this. The "Scuttle" option was to deny the U.S Navy from getting a look at effectively a "State of the Art" Soviet submarine, as a third option was get the crew onto the ice shelf & issue a general distress call ! K-19 got the nickname "Hiroshima" as a result of this, & was only recently scrapped !

It turns out that K-19 had a "Interesting" history after the events of the movie. It was deconaminated, refitted, & sent back to sea in 1964, only to suffer a underwater collision with the USS Cato in 1969 !
This was not the end of the story, as in 1972, it suffered a internal fire which killed 20 of its crewman.
The reason why K-19 got the nickname "Widowmaker" was due to accidents, at the shipyard during it's construction, which killed 10 workers !

There aren't radiation suits on subs today, American ones anyway. There are two steams suits and ways to shut the ventillation from the engine room, but no suits.

A film based on the maiden voyage of the first of Russia's nuclear powered missile subs.

Starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson.

I've got to admit that the conditions of submarine life in the 60's is really brought home in this movie. You can see here that things haven't really advanced much since the days of Das Boot till here in terms of crew comfort. Both Ford and Neeson put in decent performances and the failures and general laxity of early Soviet weapons programmes are shown up. This isn't even confined to decades ago as old November class subs were still operating well into the 80's long past their service life.