K-19: The Widowmaker

Slate David Edelstein

Impressive and heartfelt.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

(Director Bigelow) piles up one nerve-racking crisis after another, interspersed with moments of ethereal, almost otherworldly beauty.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

May be a bit too grim and claustrophobic to become a certifiable summer blockbuster, but it's a pulse-pounding thriller that brings one of the Cold War's darkest and deadliest episodes to the big screen.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

K-19 will not go down in the annals of cinema as one of the great submarine stories, but it is an engaging and exciting narrative of Man confronting the Demons of his own fear and paranoia.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

I don't think that a woman behind the camera necessarily affects the tenor of what is on screen, but never before have I seen a men-of-war film more notable for its psychology than its spectacle.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

As a grueling "trip" movie and cautionary tale of the nuclear age, K-19 fits the bill. The harsh depiction of everyday life in the Soviet navy and numerous scenes of seamen exposing themselves to lethal doses of radiation are profoundly disturbing.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

A relentlessly serious action movie, characterized by, of all things, sorrow.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

There is one surprise in the movie, a decision having nothing to do with the reactor, that depends entirely on the ability of the characters to act convincingly under enormous pressure; casting stars of roughly equal weight helps it to work.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The movie gradually works its way, with quiet intelligence and apparent conviction, until there's no turning from it. An hour in, and we're on that boat.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Bigelow gives this film edge, tension and something you aren't expecting: a woman's touch for teasing out the buried emotion beneath those stoic surfaces.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

As a technical achievement, K-19 is right up there with Das Boot. Don't expect much dramatic depth, though. The fathoms descended in this movie are strictly nautical.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

As square-shouldered as you'd expect of a National Geographic co-production. But Bigelow hits all her marks and more within the narrow parameters.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Remains an above-average and affecting descent into both heretofore unknown Soviet naval history and the always popular submarine-in-peril genre.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

The Cold War isn't exactly a hot ticket right now, but K-19 punches up the timeless aspects of the story -- adventure, danger, teamwork, noble self-sacrifice and two forceful actors butting heads, even if you don't buy them as Russian for a moment.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

It took guts to bring this story to the screen, but at its core it has the wrong stuff.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Despite its exciting moments, the film is too long.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

With uncommon ineptitude even by the standards of contemporary action flicks, Kyle's script submerges the inherently dramatic tale of the K-19 under a pile of clichés, while failing to tell you enough about the characters for their actions to make much sense.

Variety Robert Koehler

Obediently follows the verities of the submarine movie and its true story origins but without the imagination needed to refresh the genre.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

After spending so much time letting the characters' deeds do the talking, the film veers into overkill, which comes as a letdown. But the actions linger longer than the words.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

K-19's determination to push hard for self-congratulatory morals and convenient resolutions undercut the film's strengths and make it more conventional.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It's a pretty good sub movie, with some pretty good performances, that, alas, somewhat disintegrates in the last half-hour.

Film Threat Michael Dequina

While watchable, skews more toward the drier expectations fostered by that publication's name then the more exciting, explosive ones associated with the genre.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Perhaps the post-cold-war attitudes behind this film are progressive, but the same old pre-nuclear-war worship of the military goes all but unchallenged.

Film Threat David Grove

A cold war thriller told from the Russian point of view which gives it the appearance of having more credibility and dark truth than if this were an American story.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Despite drawing from one of the most powerful and true stories from the Cold War, K-19 is only moderately moving.

LA Weekly John Powers

K-19 is so unnervingly square that it seems eerily like Party-sanctioned Soviet filmmaking: Its Motherland-loving sailors, myth-making shots of K-19 and displays of heroism are worthy of the Young Lenin Pioneers' Handbook.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

The script doesn't give Bigelow enough human stuff to balance the mechanical. For good or ill, like so many other submarine thrillers before it, K-19 is more about the machine than the men.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The lead actors come from America, Ireland, Iceland, England and South Africa. Who decided they should attempt Russian accents? Neeson forgets his, Ford wavers in and out, and real Russians in the cast make the others sound inauthentic.

New Times (L.A.) Gregory Weinkauf

Of all the A-list men playing dedicated authority figures, Star Wars alums Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson remain among the most amusing and pleasing, which is why K-19: The Widowmaker glides along engagingly rather than sinking.

USA Today Mike Clark

Though this saga would be terrific to read about, it is dicey screen material that only a genius should touch. With no genius in sight, K-19 might be headed for meltdown.

TV Guide Ken Fox

The truly heartbreaking sacrifice of a few extraordinarily heroic men is lost under the ponderous score and a series of even heavier speeches.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

What's really needed is a story with some sizzle, but Bigelow, in K-19, can't seem to decide whether she's making a shoot-the-works underwater rouser, like ''U-571'' or ''Crimson Tide,'' or a lofty historical message movie that hits us with the breaking news that the arms race was, in every sense, a poisonous game.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

The movie becomes an American salute to military patriotism, anybody's military patriotism. Think of it as "A Few Good Reds."

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

A long, lumbering brute of a movie, no easier to maneuver than the vessel itself. [29 July 2002, p. 92]

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Rarely has a major motion picture -- and this one is major by virtue of its misplaced ambition as well as its budget -- been afflicted by such flagrant dissonance between subject and style.